


In The Shadows of Giants

by Mithrigil



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Adolescent Sexuality, Awkward Crush, Childhood Trauma, Deception, First Crush, Force Training, Gen, Hearing Voices, M/M, Start Of Darkness, The Dark Side of the Force, the calls are coming from inside the house
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-08-10 04:43:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 20,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7830769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithrigil/pseuds/Mithrigil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ben Solo knows what he's supposed to do: train hard, revitalize the Force, be good and be strong and drill all the feelings out of himself until he's the perfect Jedi.</p>
<p>Ezra Bridger is living proof that that's not how the Force works.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. NINE

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there! Rebels spoilers and speculations, of course. I'm going off the assumption that Ezra decides the Jedi Way isn't for him, but that he's still largely playing for the good guys, much like Ahsoka.
> 
> Advance warning: this story will not end well for anyone involved.
> 
> But there's room in the handbasket for anyone else who wants in!

It’s not much of a Jedi School, and Uncle Luke isn’t much of a teacher. 

For the first few weeks, it was just Ben and Luke, cleaning up an ancient Temple and trying to figure out how to fix the thousand-year-old plumbing. Ben’s pretty proud to say he’s got a handle on sight-unseen-telekinesis now that he’s cleared far too much ancient gunk out of hundreds of rusty pipes. But he’s not supposed to be proud of _anything_. Uncle Luke says it’s not the Jedi Way to be proud. Which makes no sense, because Luke’s proud sometimes too, even says so. Usually when he _isn’t_ actually proud, and just wants to make Ben feel better.

All adults lie.

* *

Ben hoped it would change when the other younglings arrived, but, no dice. More than anything else, it reminds Ben of the most annoying of Mom’s parties-that-aren’t-parties: it’s a lot of people sitting around saying one thing while they think another and talk about the way things used to be before Ben was born. The only difference is that Mom’s friends are all old and rich, and now the Jedi school is full of people that aren’t either. (And Dad’s friends are all crooks, but at least they’re interesting when they sit around and lie, and they don’t lie about being crooked.) Some of the younglings are older than Ben, but only by a couple of months; most are younger, much younger, three and four and five. Some of their parents move in to watch all the kids, like Luke asked Mom to, but she wouldn’t do it. Luke ropes Ben into showing everyone around and running errands, instead of teaching him.

_I’ll teach you instead,_ Grandfather says, in Ben’s head where he’s been since before he can remember. _You can learn so much more from me._

About three months into this, when the sun starts setting earlier and the plumbing is finally working, a battered VCX-100 lands on their makeshift docking bay and burns a patch of grass. It’s not as amazing, or as old, as the _Falcon_ , but Ben has to admit the starbird nose art and orange stripes are pretty cool. Of course more younglings pour off it ( _great_ , thinks Ben), but so does a blind man about Uncle Lando’s age and almost as dark-skinned. Blind or not, he makes a beeline down the ramp for Luke, and Luke straight up _bows_ to him, and when the man says it’s all right he’s lying through his teeth.

He doesn’t want to be here. Ben can appreciate that, at least.

Master Jarrus, like all adults, lies about everything. He lies about missing his wife and children (only one of the three is Force-sensitive and he doesn’t want to split them up), he lies about thinking the School is a good idea, he lies about knowing as much as he does about the old Jedi Order. He’s also afraid literally all of the time, and lies about that too. Whenever Master Jarrus looks at Ben, Ben gets this _flash_ of someone else’s face, someone else with speckly skin and shaggy hair, with a crossguard saber that looks really cool and a pyramid holocron. And, of course, Master Jarrus lies and says the vision isn’t important, and isn’t true.

_It’s an ancient Sith design,_ Grandfather explains. _He fears the dark side, just like all the others._

With Master Jarrus to help, the School starts to feel like one. Luke’s stronger, but Master Jarrus knows more (even if he lies about it), and unlike Luke he actually knows how to teach. He explains, one day, that he had a Padawan back during the war. Ben puts two and two together and hopes that he’ll replace that failure someday.

* *

The seasons shift again, the days stretching out and the rain subsiding, and a different big ship drops by, this one sleeker and more martial than Master Jarrus’s _Ghost_. This time, the pilot is a Togruta female who towers over Luke and carries a ‘saber on each hip. For the first few minutes of knowing her, Ben’s sure that Ahsoka’s going to be the first adult other than Uncle Chewie who doesn’t lie to him, because she doesn’t lie to Luke. She refuses to let him call her Master Tano. She refuses to let him call her General. She refuses to stay, but says she’ll keep looking for more younglings and any other survivors, and she’s willing to take _some_ but not _all_ of the older ones on when the time is right. Luke is confused and disappointed and Ben admires her immediately.

_Because she is no Jedi,_ Grandfather points out. _She knows that the galaxy has moved on._

But she looks at Ben--just _looks_ at him--and something venomously sad flashes through her, impossible to shield. She looks at him and knows him, and calls him by Grandfather’s name like she can hear him too, and it isn’t fair. And Ben is relieved when she disappears in the night.

* *

A full year passes, and ships come and go, and it’s summer again. Ben is taller, Luke is not. Ben is stronger than all of the other younglings, even though some are better at meditating and most are better at shielding (he’s working on it, he swears, but shielding is lying and he doesn’t want to lie like the rest of them, and he’s afraid that if he tries to block the others out he’ll block himself out too, and Grandfather, and that’s unacceptable), and Luke pretends not to be proud. And Master Jarrus pretends not to be afraid. And Mom holos every few months, when she isn’t busy, and Dad and Uncle Chewie drop by with supplies twice but never stay, and Grandfather says that _you’re better than them, stay here, learn what you can from these hypocrites and charlatans_ , and Ben has to ask what those words mean.

He finds out what they mean.

They mean _adults_.

* *

An HH-87 starfighter doesn’t ask for clearance, just lands, on the hottest day of summer so far. Its nose art proclaims it the _Reaper_ , with crossed scythes forming the starbird’s wings. Luke doesn’t want to let it land, but Master Jarrus makes him, and Ben’s heart stops as the most beautiful man he’s ever seen comes down the ramp, arguing with everybody.

Ben already knows that face. It’s grown up, but he’s seen it before, behind Master Jarrus’s eyes. Dark gold skin, two white scars on the cheek, a hooked nose that looks better on him than it does on Ben and a black ponytail that doesn’t keep all the hair off his face and eyes bluer than ‘saber blades. He and Master Jarrus yell at each other the way Mom and Dad do, about where he stole a ship off the Hutts and how dare he bring it here of all places, and Ezra Bridger laughs and laughs and laughs.

_Yes,_ Grandfather says, or maybe Ben just says it to himself, over and over. _Yes. Him._

* *

“Ben!” Luke calls, and waves him over to the starfighter’s ramp. “Why don’t you show Ezra around? Ezra, my nephew, Ben.”

Ben barely remembers to bow; Ezra looks him up and down and offers him a hand instead. “Good to meet you, Ben,” he says, simply.

When their hands touch, Ben feels power unlike anything he’s ever known. But before he can piece through it at all, Ezra’s already a length away, jogging ahead to the Temple grounds, and Ben has to run to catch up.

Ezra stoops to look at an outcropping of stone, two thirds of a circle, unbalanced and raw. The sun shines through it, setting. “When did he find this place?”

“Um,” Ben says, stupidly. “Two years ago I think. That’s when he told Mom he’d chosen this planet anyway.”

“It’s so much like Lothal,” he muses, tracing his hand into the grooves. “Did he build all the new parts himself?”

“I helped.”

Ezra smiles brightly, and says, “I’ll bet you did.”

He isn’t lying. He isn’t lying. He isn’t lying. He believes that Ben could help. Did help. He sees Ben’s power and he isn’t afraid.

Ben stares, even after the sun gets in his eyes.

* *

_Do you feel it?_ Grandfather asks him, in the night, when Ben is the only one in the crèche awake, _Do you feel the power in him the way he does in you?_

_Yes_ is all Ben can say to that. It’s all he’s been saying. Ezra feels _right_ in a way that no one else he’s ever met does, or maybe ever will.

_That is because he is not a Jedi either,_ Grandfather says. _He is free. He has forsaken their way and found a truer power._

_No._ Ezra can’t be a Sith. If he were Sith, surely Luke would know.

_Not Sith,_ Grandfather clarifies. _Your Uncle saw the Sith exterminated. But think, Ben. Think of how it feels when the light burns your eyes. Think of how in true brightness you cannot see. Think of Master Jarrus, blinded by the same weapon he claims to use. This Ezra has seen it too. He could be of value to you. To us. Stay close to him._

_Yes._ Grandfather’s right. He always is.

* *

Ezra stays at the School for an entire season. Just Ben’s luck, he’s incredibly popular, and difficult to get alone. He has a million stories and dashing adventures, but they’re not built on lies like Dad and Lando’s stories, or ancient faerie-tales like Chewie tells, or sugar-coated parables like Luke’s. Ezra tells every part of his stories, even the ones that make him look bad, even the ones that make Luke and Master Jarrus frown. He lets the littlest younglings climb all over him and takes everyone who asks for rides on the _Reaper_. He teaches Ben and the other nine- and ten-year-olds how to play sabaac Outer Rim style and how to use the Force to cheat. And he lets everyone play with his hair, even though they do it wrong.

That’s the first time he’s seen Ezra lie, actually: to make the littlest kids feel better. He waits until they’re gone to run a hand through his hair and start untangling the sloppy braids.

“I could do it better,” Ben says.

“I bet you could,” Ezra says, like the first time they met. And he isn’t lying. The Force shows his thoughts and his signature to Ben without any clouds whatsoever. “You’re Alderaanian, right?”

“Sort of,” Ben says. “But Mom is. She knows everything about hair.” He doesn’t mean to think about it, because he’s not supposed to miss Mom, but he remembers how she taught him. “Yours isn’t as long.”

“Yeah, that’s a tough act to follow.” His eyes crinkle when he smiles, and he makes a come-here gesture, more with his shoulders than his hands. “You gonna show me, or not?”

Ben blinks. “Oh. Yeah.” And he comes to stand behind Ezra, who stays seated in the matted grass. The sun is setting again--that’s why the littlest kids had to leave, right--and Ezra looks out at it like it’s going to look back. Ben touches his hair, right on one of the knots that one of the younglings left. It’s a pretty nasty knot, big as a drain clog. Ben gets those all the time, now that Mom’s not here to brush it and Luke doesn’t know how and letting one of the crèchemasters do it seems wrong.

“It’s okay,” Ezra says. He’s not lying here either. The Force around him is warm, amused. Like Chewie, when Ben was little and cried a lot (he doesn’t cry anymore, he swears). “Hey--I’ve got an idea.”

“Try and pull it apart with the Force?” Ben guesses. He’s not sure how or why. But it’s right, and he knows it.

Ezra looks over his shoulder and nods. “Better than counting bugs or doing handstands, right?”

Ben nods too, and he puts his fingers back on the knot, and closes his eyes.

“Kanan used to make me do this.” In the Force, Ezra sounds and feels so warm and happy, unlike anyone else Ben’s ever known. “After he couldn’t see anymore. But when I tried it on myself I screwed it up so bad that I had to shave my head.”

“That sucks.”

“Yeah, it did. People like it better long. So do I.” Ezra laughs, but Ben focuses, and the workings of the knot come through, individual hairs like the wires in a machine or those clots in the pipes. Hair is dead, but it was living once, and Ezra’s strands are thick and easy to follow. “Makes it easier to hide my ears, too.”

Ben looks--shoot, now he’ll have to start concentrating again--but before he gets back to untangling he looks at Ezra’s ears. There’s nothing wrong with them. 

“They were bigger when I was a kid,” he explains, like he can hear Ben’s thoughts too. Of course he can. Maybe he’s listening. “Or they looked bigger. Yours’ll be the same, I think. You’re gonna be really tall, like Kanan. Maybe even bigger.”

“Mom’s short, though.”

“Yeah, but she doesn’t talk short.”

“You know my Mom?”

“Yeah, met her when I was a little older than you. She came to help out my home planet but we had to make it look like we were stealing from her.” Ezra laughs again, and his neck tilts, but Ben’s almost done unwinding the knot, he can feel it. He knows he can’t crack his eyes but he imagines the hairs fanning out like black seaweed, and seeing them in the Force is beautiful. Then they’re free. And Ben is proud, and knows he shouldn’t be, but maybe Ezra doesn’t care.

When Ben opens his eyes, Ezra’s shaking back his hair, and yes, it’s loose and fixed. “Great job,” he says, smiling like he’s proud too. Luke never is. Mom and Dad almost never are and they don’t understand anyway. “You’re the strongest kid here, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.” Ben won’t lie. Ezra hasn’t lied to him. “Still not strong enough, though.”

“You will be,” Ezra says, and Ben braces for the _if_ and the _but_ that usually follows statements like that. It never comes.

* *

Ezra promises to come back. He doesn’t lie and say he knows when, but Grandfather says he’ll make sure of it, and Ben believes them both.

* *


	2. TEN

In almost two years, Ben has seen his father once and his mother never, but she still holos once a standard month, like it’s written into her busy schedule. Not that Ben’s schedule isn’t busy either: today, he arrives on Ilum to see the caves and find his kyber crystal. Only four younglings are being allowed to go at all. Master Jarrus spends the entire ride telling the story of how he prevented the Empire from blowing this planet up after the Battle of Endor, which Ben’s heard a thousand times already, so Ben sits in the cockpit with Master Jarrus’s wife instead. He watches the starstreaks through the transparisteel until she tells him that he’s making her nervous.

Well, _fine_. He’ll find somewhere else to be. Maybe the cargo hold.

There’s graffiti in the bridge-right corner. It looks like Ezra failing to do a headstand.

_Don’t bother with any of them,_ Grandfather says. _She doesn’t understand. She’s Force-null. She’s empty._

Master Jarrus finds him there eight hours later and tells him to go sleep in a bunk instead.

* *

Ilum is supposed to be beautiful. Ben thinks it’s mostly ice and about twenty different shades of white, like a desert made of snow instead of sand. It hurts to look at. Aside from the gaping pillars and ancient overhangs, and the _Ghost_ off to the side with its bright orange stripes, there’s nothing to break the unrelenting light apart.

Their instructions are as follows: enter the cave, face what the cave tells you to face, and emerge before the gate freezes over if you want to live. Simple. Ben’s the first through the gate.

It’s better inside the cave than out, at least at first. Dark craggy walls and a massively high ceiling boast crystals and ice--Ben forgets whether they’re stalactites or stalagmites, but they’re icicles and they’re everywhere, like teeth. Something hums, faintly, like wind through a window slat, and Ben follows it down corridor after corridor.

_Did you ever come here, Grandfather?_

_Oh yes,_ Grandfather says, laughing like a distant earthquake. _Many times._

_What do I do?_

The screech of a crystal drowns Grandfather’s answer out.

Ben barrels down the corridor, skids on a frozen pool. It’s his. He knows it’s his. It sounds enormous! The question is _where is it_ , not whether it’s his. But it’s not in this cavelet, nor the next. Nor the next. Nor the rocky outcropping over the frozen lake. Stars, it’s like trying to kill an insect, only worse, because of the creeping cold and the laughter and awed shrieks echoing off the ice when his crèchemates find their crystals first.

But there’s that siren. That crystal. It keeps ringing and ringing, deep in the caves, in all the darker places. Maybe Ben’s trial is to prove he’s not afraid. Well, he’s never been afraid of the dark. He climbs down a short cliff to a frozen river, lets his eyes adjust. The crystals down here are bigger--maybe that’s why, maybe he’s destined for bigger--and the ringing hasn’t stopped, gets louder around every bend.

Hours pass. Hours, of nothing but cold and empty crystals, black rock and white ice. Ben’s fingers go numb. Maybe he’s supposed to trade a hand, like Luke did. Or his eyes, like Master Jarrus. That would be sick and gross but it would make sense. The crystal is laughing at him, wherever it is. It’s calling him a failure, but Ben hasn’t failed. Not yet.

He refuses to fail. He _has_ to be as strong as Grandfather, and as good as Uncle Luke and as tough as Uncle Chewie and as smart as Mom and Dad and as perfect as the man they all named him after, and that means _not failing_. He’s not allowed. _It’s_ not allowed.

Maybe the crystal’s deep in the walls, where no one can see it. Maybe that’s the trick.

Ben starts digging, numb fingers and all.

* *

When Master Jarrus finds him, hours later, Ben is knee-deep in a pile of shards, none of which are his crystal. His blood bounces off them wherever it hits. He doesn’t know how many cuts he has but none of them hurt anymore, and besides, it doesn’t matter, getting the crystal is more important--

\--Master Jarrus drags him bodily out of the cave. For the first few steps, Ben kicks and screams. Then, he just passes out.

* *

In the dark, in his mind, it’s warm and sleepy. He floats on a hot ocean, water filling his ears, and Grandfather sings him low, soothing lullabies, like he’s done since before Ben can remember. It’s like being held by Uncle Chewie, but with less fur. Ben drifts, and Grandfather pets his hair, or his heart, and maybe he would look weak if it happened outside of the Force but it’s _Grandfather_ so it’s okay.

_That hypocrite stopped you,_ Grandfather says. _It isn’t your fault. You would have found it if he’d let you finish. They’re jealous of your power. They’re afraid of you like they were afraid of me. Even now they’re talking about how afraid they are. They don’t understand, young one. They’ll let their ignorance and fear hold you back, like they hold themselves back. Never let that happen to you._

_Yes, Grandfather,_ Ben thinks, or _Master_ , or somewhere in-between.

* *

Apparently he was in the bacta tank for a week.

“Hey, Benny,” Mom says, like she’s about to cry. She’s sitting beside the cot and holding his hand, which is still bandaged, and faking a smile, and she’s lying about how much she wishes she never had to come here and how she thinks Ben shouldn’t be training at all and how they’re all in big trouble and she regrets everything.

“Go away,” Ben says, because he hears everything his mother doesn’t say.

She pets his hair anyway and doesn’t listen to him. She never does.

* *

They talk about him. All of them: Luke, Mom, Master Jarrus. Ahsoka, when she checks in. They don’t think he can hear them from the infirmary, but be definitely can. They talk about how maybe he should take a year off-planet or stop altogether. They talk about how maybe he should never have come here in the first place. They talk about Grandfather and they say that he’s terrible and that Ben’s going to be terrible too.

_Let them,_ Grandfather says. _Let them display their ignorance so you can learn from it, young one. You’ll be stronger than any of them. Prove them wrong._

But Ezra, Ezra comes and sits by Ben’s bedside and tells him they’re going away together. Or maybe that’s just a dream. Ezra tells him that he doesn’t have to be a Jedi. Ezra tells him that the grown-ups never understand anyway, but he’s different. Ezra remembers what it’s like and he’ll show Ben what the Force can do, and it’s different, it’s _better_ , and he’s Ezra’s Padawan-but-not because they’re not-Jedi together.

_Apprentice,_ Grandfather corrects. _The word you’re looking for is apprentice._

* *

“C’mon, kid,” Ezra says, and wait, is this real? This has to be real. There’s a hand on Ben’s shoulder helping him out of bed, and Ben blinks about five times before the world spins around and he’s being shoved toward his travel kit. “Rise and shine, Ben Solo. You’ve got work to do.”

“What?”

“We’re going to Lothal and it takes two to open the Temple gate,” Ezra explains, like it explains everything, when all it really does is _what. What._

“--Really?” Ben manages not to drop his pack, but just barely.

“Yeah! And I heard you’re a mean co-pilot.” He flashes a grin that lights up the infirmary like a second star.

It’s the second lie Ben’s ever seen Ezra tell. He’s not lying about thinking Ben’s a good co-pilot--of course not, Ben’s the _best_ co-pilot except for Chewie and that’s only because Chewie is almost two hundred and fifty years old--but he’s not saying something. He’s not saying that this is because Ben failed on Ilum. And he knows it, so that’s a lie--

“I didn’t get my first crystal at Ilum either,” Ezra says, and then it’s not a lie anymore, just Ben digging too deep to early. “So I thought, maybe you’re like me. Maybe the Force has something else to show you without all that ice getting in the way, right?”

_Maybe you’re like me_ are the most beautiful words Ben has ever heard.

* *


	3. ELEVEN

Traveling with Ezra is _the best thing ever_.

Okay maybe not ever, there were times on the _Falcon_ that were really good, and Chewie’s friends on Kashyyyk were nice and let him climb the big trees at night, and _Grandfather_ is of course the best thing ever, but Traveling With Ezra is the best thing _right now_ and that’s awesome.

His ship--he sold the _Reaper_ off and this is his usual one--has a slick sunny-sky-blue paintjob and the callsign _Rex_. It’s a Starmite like the classic Ben’s supposed to inherit from Dad and Uncle Lando someday, except not beat-up and third-hand, and handles like a dream. Ben slots right into place in the co-pilot’s seat and Ezra actually _lets_ him do the job instead of pretending.

Once they’re secure in hyperspace, Ezra spins out of the cockpit and gives Ben the (brief) tour, then settles in the cargo hold and tells him that he promised Kanan and Luke that he wouldn’t let Ben slack off on meditation. Ben says it’s fine, he knew he’d have to, but maybe they can do it together?

“That’s the idea,” Ezra says, smiling bright.

Ben’s always found it easier to meditate out in space. It’s less noisy. Planetside, there’s always so much going on, even if there aren’t any people around. So up here, with just the two of them, it’s simple to steady his breath and listen only to his heart and the Force. And Ezra: right across from him, the only other point of warmth out here.

Hours pass, at least. Ben can’t help noticing the flicker of surprise from Ezra’s Force signature; pleasant surprise, that Ben can sit still and keep up. It’s a little disappointing that Ezra didn’t think that Ben would have an easy time meditating, but only a little, and he’s clearly not disappointed anymore. Ben tries to send a clear thought to him, a memory: the blasting brightness of Uncle Luke’s thoughts, the ghosts in the School, how hard it is to concentrate when the world doesn’t shut up and when his consciousness calls out to all the people expecting things of him. Ezra sends him a memory too: Master Jarrus, back when he could see, not strong enough to teach Ezra and trying to pass him off to someone else. He understands. He knows. Ben lets his relief out into the Force, and Ezra accepts it, and it’s wonderful.

When Ben opens his eyes, Ezra’s still smiling.

It’s Ben’s bedtime, which, okay, that’s fair, but Ezra helps him change his bandages and brush his hair, and he sleeps for an entire shift, happier than he’s ever remembered being.

* *

The Lothal Temple grows out of the ground like it’s always been there. The stone twists up from the earth like a screw coming undone and erupts with the Force, and Ben’s hair blasts back all the way off his shoulders. He mirrors Ezra’s stance as best he can, presses against the corners of his mind to find the right way to talk to the Force--it’s like calling, not pulling, and Ben lets the voice of his signature double Ezra’s like a half-sized bell. When the gates grind open a cold wind buffets Ben’s face, and it smells like dust and dead grass like some parts of Kashyyyk, and it’s so wonderful Ben wants to cry.

“Pretty awesome, right?” Ezra bounds down a few steps and skids on the hillside, and Ben scrambles after him to the new stone overpass. They go through the dark gate side-by-side. Ezra takes out his ‘saber to light the way; it glows an almost orangey gold, and their shadows bleed into more shadows until they come to a rounded foyer. There are archways, but where there should be doors beneath them everything is blocked.

Ezra snickers, powers off his ‘saber, slaps some dust off the floor and settles in to meditate. Ben follows suit, and Ezra threads his mind with a thought: _this is supposed to happen,_ he promises, _it was like that for me too. You’ll find the door when it wants you to._

It seems silly to say that the Force is strong here, but maybe _strong_ isn’t the right word. When Ben lets himself go, the ghosts come out--battles fought deep in the walls, spinning red ‘sabers and bright yellow pikes, the signatures of thousands of Jedi and a handful of Sith blasting into Ben’s eyes. But here, he can see it all without squinting it away. Like he’s at the center of a great battle, but hasn’t lifted a finger. Like the world can pass through him. He breathes, and it still smells like dust, and metal and heat, but this place is different than the School. Older, more distant. Less heavy. That’s it, less heavy; with the Force this strong, it’s taking some of the weight off of Ben, like mag-lev technology or artificial gravity or how he can lift Chewie if they’re both in the water.

A voice that isn’t Grandfather’s whispers through Ben’s hair:

_Is strength truly all you seek?_

Ben’s eyes flash open. Ezra is gone--the Temple is gone--it’s possible that Lothal is gone, completely, and Ben is just kneeling among the stars. He tries not to freak out, but he can’t even feel anyone else with the Force, like he’s unconscious or dead.

_Answer, child,_ that same voice says. It’s modulated, like Grandfather’s in the holovids, but higher, in that weird central place that could be any species or any sex.

Ben gathers himself to his feet--somehow, not like there’s really a floor here--and casts about, but there’s no one to see. He looks up, all the way up. There’s a patch there with no stars in it, a black nebula.

“No,” Ben says, “not just strength.”

_But you do seek strength._

“Of course. I need to be strong to be what they want me to be!”

_They?_

It’s hard to look all the way up when he wants to hang his head, so much. But Ben refuses. “My family,” he says. “My Uncle is the Jedi Grandmaster. He’s founding a new Order and I’m supposed to be part of it.”

_Supposed?_ the voice laughs, a dark and winding echo like a speeder narrowly missing him. _Why become something you don’t want to be?_

“It’s not that I don’t want to.” Ben whirls to chase the voice, but of course gets nowhere, and the stars warp and flicker. “I do. I want to be good enough. I want to make them all proud of me, and they won’t be if I’m not a Jedi.”

The voice isn’t laughing so much anymore--it’s more that dry tone that Mom sometimes uses when Dad thinks he’s being funny. _Right. Because that’s what a Jedi is now, isn’t it. Someone who wears sackcloth and carries his Master around a swamp._

“I know!” Ben scoffs. “It doesn’t make sense to me either. But it’s what they want--it’s what I have to be--”

The nebula expands into blackness, and mask looms overhead, smooth like a ship. It’s almost featureless, barely a slat for eyes, a red streak down the middle, a narrow chin. Ben’s words dry up in his mouth.

_And what do **you** want, child?_

Ben can’t speak.

_You do want something, don’t you?_

“A Jedi--” Ben stammers as the folds of a dark, starchy cloak beat his cheeks. “A Jedi doesn’t want anything--”

The voice growls enough to shake the stars. _A Jedi isn’t ruled by desire. That doesn’t mean not wanting anything. You’re a sentient being. You breathe. You need. You want._

“I want them to love me,” Ben chokes out. He didn’t mean to. The words happen anyway, true enough to hurt.

A gloved hand comes down on Ben’s head, freezes him in place. It would be tender and gentle, maybe, if it weren’t coming from a creature in a mask.

_Any Jedi who claims not to love is no Jedi at all,_ it says, and air rushes back into Ben’s lungs all at once, but now his won’t blink. _But, you. You want them to love **you**._

Another black-gloved hand emerges from that floating cloak. This time, it holds Ben’s cheek and chin, like the mask needs a closer look at his eyes. Ben sees, without blinking, and the stars converge into all the memories he hates.

_You’re undisciplined,_ the voice says, through Luke’s downturned face as Ben fails, yet again, to shield his mind.

_You’re weak,_ it says through Chewie, wounded after the battle to reclaim Kashyyyk and nearly crushing Ben just leaning on his shoulder.

_You can’t control your temper,_ it says through Dad, right after Ben threw a wrench at his head so hard it dented the hull.

_You’re a greedy, selfish little boy,_ it says as Mom shoos him away while she works in the war room, _and you want them to love you?_

“No.” It sounds too much like a whimper, so he says it again, better this time. “No. Not like that. They’ll love me if I’m better. They’ll love me if I’m good.”

_If they were ever going to, they already do._

“Then they don’t.” Ben doesn’t mean to cry. He never does. But that’s proof, isn’t it, that he’s not fit to be a Jedi after all. “Because I’m not good.”

Both gloved thumbs stroke under his eyes. It doesn’t wipe the tears away, just spreads them thinner. _Who decides what goodness is? Them? Or you?_

Ben gapes, but the galaxy lurches around him even as the mask follows his eyes and the hands still hold his face. The red stripe on the mask gets bigger and bigger, a giant of a star, and something in Ben is burnt away and he can’t stop it. The fire claws through all of his skin, straight into his mind, into the darkest places where Ben can’t remember ever going and barely even feel like his.

Someone else speaks through Ben’s mouth: _“And what would you know, Revanchist, about being good?”_

It must be Grandfather. Who else could it be?

The gloved hands slip off of Ben’s face, and the mask reels back, almost as if it’s surprised.

Then it laughs and laughs, like Ezra on the loading dock two years ago.

_No wonder,_ the voice from the mask says, filling every hollow in Ben’s eyes and ears. _No wonder you don’t know, you **can’t** , not with **that** in the way! But I’ll be glad to help you find it, child. Seek me out again when you do._

* *

Ben comes to, at the sound of something light dinging on stone. He blinks, twice, three times, and there it is, right in front of him: a crystal the size of his littlest finger, the straw-gold color of cooling steel.

Across from him, Ezra is still meditating, thick eyebrows knotted in worry. But Ben can wait, Ben _will_ wait, and he sits with the kyber crystal cradled in his hands and listens for more voices in the dark.

Traveling with Ezra _is_ the best thing ever.

* *


	4. INTERLUDE

Ahsoka’s physiology is not well-suited to Mustafar. Then again, any species adapted to a world of lava and concentrated hatred wouldn’t be suited to live anywhere else, so the place can’t be expected to welcome anyone. When she emerges from her ship, heat blasts her in waves strong enough to make her montrals ring. But she braves it, and follows the tendrils of memory over the shifting black earth.

The place itself isn’t evil. But dark deeds lurk in its memory, out of sight and out of reach.

On a stable outcropping, all slick shards of obsidian, she settles in to meditate. There are only so many ways to reach her Master in the Force without going through Luke, and for this, she knows she can’t.

_Yeah,_ Anakin agrees. _He can be thick as a brick. Not that it isn’t my fault._

Ahsoka smiles, and looks over at his spectral blue form. He’s sitting beside her and looking out over the lavaflow like he’s surveyed so many battlefields, decades ago. In the Force, he appears to her as she knew him, the Anakin Skywalker that died here, from a certain point of view. He seems so young, suffused with equal parts hate and hope.

“Like father, like son,” she teases, lightly elbowing him even though he’ll never feel it.

He scoffs, but smiles, a little. _Hey, I was never **that** bad._

“Not to hear Obi-Wan tell it.”

_You didn’t just come here to rag on me, Snips. You could have done that at the School._

To the point, as ever. “No, Master. I’m not sure I could have. Some of those kids hear _everything._ ”

_Yeah, well. Some of them definitely don’t._

“Luke?”

_Ben._

Ahsoka nods, and can’t help a tight smile of her own. “There’s too much going on in his head for him to listen, I think. I remember what I was like at that age.”

_So do I,_ Anakin says, but the way the Force tenses around him means clearly that there isn’t much more he’ll say on the subject.

So Ahsoka returns to the matter at hand: her hunt for the first-and-last Inquisitor, the stirrings of the dark side in the Outer Rim, the hum of ancient ruins in unknown space. The galaxy is shifting, has shifted, will shift, and Ahsoka balances in the middle. Anakin understands, but for him it was always more about vacillating between the extremes than settling precariously in the space between.

A flash burns behind Ahsoka’s eyes, like lightning igniting a bough. Malachor. A crossguarded Sith ‘saber. Knowledge. Power. The best intentions, easing the pull toward darkness.

“--Ezra?” she gasps--

\--and at the same time, Anakin echoes, _Ben?_

* *


	5. THIRTEEN

Maybe the School doesn’t suck so much after all.

For one thing, now that Ben’s got his ‘saber up and running, the littlest younglings respect him a whole lot more, and his agemates are jealous and in awe. They still whisper behind Ben’s back for a year and a half, sure, but they think things about him like _special_ and _lucky_ and _tough_. They don’t think he’s just coasting along as Luke’s nephew anymore. He’s proven he’s supposed to be here too, and now that he’s got a sword no one can argue with that.

(And no one else’s is gold. Ilum got them greens and blues. Obedient, simple, common greens and blues.)

For another thing, the other students aren’t so bad anymore. Lufi, a Nautolan a couple of months older and inches shorter than Ben, starts a fight with him after mess one day and when nobody wins they end up necking in the forest instead. It happens again a couple of days later--this time it’s Ben’s fault, he didn’t know where they stood and he swore he didn’t mean to make a scene but Lufi was looking at Arctas like it was their turn next and Ben was _not okay_ with that--but it works out just fine. Hooking up is _great_ for drowning out all the ghosts and the noise of the Temple. Lufi thinks so too. (So does Arctas, it turns out. They fool around two months later, when he and Ben take a splashfight a little too far.)

It’s also good that Luke and Master Jarrus aren’t just parroting old holocrons anymore. There are real things to learn, like ‘saber forms and mind tricks. Luke’s flustered and exasperated all the time, which means that sometimes Ben wins sparring passes or catches him lying. Master Jarrus is prickly, like there’s always a pebble in his shoe. A couple more not-Jedi-not-really have come out of the woodwork and drop in to teach for a month or two--Vos, who’s even older than Master Jarrus but doesn’t act it, and his daughter Tahess, who is one of the most striking and deadly people Ben’s ever seen--but every time a new ship lands, Ben hopes it’s Ezra.

Ezra would be so impressed, Ben thinks. Ben’s the strongest with his ‘saber (even if Arctas’s technique is better and Lufi and Hikra are faster), and if he concentrates he knows where _everyone_ is on the planet, and he can stop a blaster bolt at ten yards with just the Force. Ezra’d be proud that Ben’s growing too--he’s taller than Luke, just like Ezra predicted--and he’d ask Ben to show off everything he’s learned. And maybe he’d teach Ben the rest, just the two of them.

Two years, though. Almost two years, Ben’s almost fourteen, and Ezra’s gone, like he was never here. He never promised to come back after Lothal, true. But he hasn’t checked in, or brought anyone by.

Maybe Ben is supposed to be strong enough to find him by now.

He knows why he isn’t. Luke’s holding him back. The Order is holding him back.

* *

Luke can’t hide his surprise when Ben asks about long-distance meditation techniques. At least he doesn’t try.

“Are you trying to look for your parents?” Luke asks.

Ben glowers at him, because what is he, a little kid? “No.”

Why bother? Dad and Chewie dropped by last season, so that’s their quota for the next five years at least, and Mom’s easier to deal with as a handspan hologram.

Luke winces. “You know, it’s okay if you are.”

“I’m _not,_ Luke.”

“It would be easier if you were,” Luke offers, still not getting it, because for all the might of the galaxy Luke can be a dense and sanctimonious twat. (Grandfather says so. And he’s _Grandfather,_ so he really means it.) “Tracking people you’ve already met, I mean. Scrying through the Force depends on your connection to someone. The stronger the connection, the easier it is. Your mom and I can find each other anywhere. Always could.”

Ben nods. “Like me and Grandfather.”

Luke doesn’t believe him about Grandfather. It’s obvious in the Force, sure, it always is, but it’s most obvious in Luke’s pathetic face. He looks up at Ben and then tilts away, like that could possibly hide the levels of sadness he’s not supposed to emanate.

Hypocrite.

“Either way,” Luke says, “I’d say to try with your mom first. You know where she is, and she’s strong enough to hear you.”

_So’s Ezra,_ Ben thinks. But he says, “Like how you tell her everything I do?”

Luke glowers, sort of. “She’s your mother, Ben.”

“She’s not a Jedi.”

“Neither are you.”

Well, finally. Luke said something true.

The Force around Ben _laughs_ , and Grandfather says _I told you so_ , and Ben lets everything down all at once.

“Then what’s the point? If I’m never going to be a Jedi, what’s the point? I’m never gonna be as good as you, I’m never gonna be the kind of Knight you want me to be, and you’re just keeping me here so you know where I am. I get it! You don’t want me to be like Grandfather, I get it! You don’t care how strong I am. You don’t even _want_ me to be strong because that would mean I could be better than you and prove you wrong, and you’ve _been_ wrong since the beginning! The Order is stupid! It’s pointless! And even if it had a point you wouldn’t know how to run it anyway because you’re not a Jedi either! You just balance rocks and teach history you don’t even know and pretend like you know what power is and you don’t!”

“It’s not about power,” Luke lies. Calmly. Like it’s nothing to him. Like Ben’s nothing to him.

“It’s _always_ about power! Stop pretending it isn’t! You’re doing this to keep everyone who uses the Force the same--”

“Ben, calm down--”

“No! Why should I? Why should I have to hold back? I could be better--I could be stronger--if you’d just let me--”

_They’ll never let you,_ Grandfather says.

“--but you never will!”

Luke’s eyes flash wide, and his hands tense. He says nothing. That’s an answer, that’s proof.

Ben’s shoulders chill, bone deep, and a pang of pure ice rams up through the bottom of his skull. Like a crystal growing in his mind, behind his shields. Luke’s trying to read him, he realizes. Probing him, like a droid.

Every _no_ he says echoes, whether it’s aloud or not, in his voice or not. Grandfather fills his brain with power and laughter, a wave of red lightning and gray rotting skin and the snap of a storm overhead.

“Who are you?” Luke asks, somewhere not here.

Someone else speaks through Ben’s lips. Or maybe they just move without sound. Or maybe Ben isn’t here at all, right now, toppling forward into Luke’s robes with no Force to resist him.

* *

Ben wakes, bleary and empty and not alone. The light of the infirmary is cold, and something heavy is weighing down his hands, and Ahsoka Tano is sitting across from the bed, inhuman and unreadable.

Unreadable.

There are no ghosts here. No voices. No lies. No _Force_ , it’s gone, he can’t hear it--

“Ben, don’t panic,” Ahsoka says.

No, no, _no_ , he’s nothing without the Force, he’ll never be good enough without it, they’ll never want him again--

“It’s not permanent,” Ahsoka goes on, like she can hear him, of course she can hear him, she can hear him but he can’t hear her because he can’t hear _anything_ , “just the binders. And just for a little while. We need you to calm down. To talk to you.”

It’s embarrassing and awful, but all Ben can do is curl up around his bound hands and cry. The pillow soaks through and scratches his cheek.

Another voice seeps into Ben’s ear. “Ahsoka, are you sure--”

“It’s safe, Luke.”

“I know,” Master Jarrus agrees, somewhere else, farther away, on the other side of the bed. “I’ve worn them.”

Ben doesn’t know how many times he says _no_. He just knows they get louder and louder. His doubled fists pound the cot, and cotton tears under his teeth. The Masters keep talking, too calm to beg but endless, and the chill in Ben’s body is like Ilum all over again, so sharp a feeling that it bleeds into sound. It screeches, drowns out their words in his ears.

_Grandfather._

_Grandfather._

_Grandfather._  
_Please._

“What the hell are you guys doing?” Ezra yells, and it cuts through almost everything. Everything but the cold.

He’s in the doorway, holding the jamb, his knuckles gone so pale that they’re almost Ben’s skin color instead.

Ahsoka straightens up, rises from her chair at the bedside. With her montrals high, she towers over Ezra, like a mountain with the sun behind it. Like Lothal. “How did you know to be here, Ezra?”

Ezra blinks, grimaces. “How do you _think_ I know? You cut him off!”

Even without the Force, Ben can still feel the tension rippling through the room. 

Ahsoka still asks Ezra, placidly, “Do you know why?”

Ezra takes his hand off the doorjamb, runs it through his hair. The ponytail twitches behind him like a stormcloud, and the shorter strands fall back against his face. Ben bites back tears. “No. I assume you’re gonna tell me, though, ‘cause I’m not leaving otherwise.”

“Don’t leave,” Ben whimpers. Something’s wrong with his voice. Something more than the cracks as it shifts down.

“I won’t,” Ezra promises, and charges into the room to steal Ahsoka’s seat at the bedside. He folds his hand over Ben’s, cuffs and all. “They won’t either, I know. But I’ve got you.”

Master Jarrus comes nearer too. “Ezra, you don’t know what’s happening here.”

“Neither do you,” Ezra spits, “and neither does he. He’s just a kid. You of all people, Kanan--you should know how that hurts!”

“I do.” Master Jarrus sounds his age. Like Chewie. “I know, Ezra. But I’m not letting what happened to me happen to him. Let alone what almost happened to _you_.”

Without letting go of Ben’s hands, Ezra balks, shoulders thudding against the back of the chair. “Kanan--you mean--”

Something, or someone, cuts Ezra off, but Ben can’t hear it. Or see it.

All four of the adults look at the exact same spot, over Ahsoka’s shoulder. Luke. Ezra. Ahsoka. Even Kanan, who can’t see. They look, and they listen.

But Ben sees nothing. Hears nothing. Just Ezra’s hand, tensing over his--

\--and Grandfather, whispering faintly in his mind.

_Do as I say, young one,_ Grandfather says, barely audible at all, like he’s coming through a field of static, _and they will set you free._

Ben nods against the pillow. Ezra turns back to him, blue eyes wide and--confused? Maybe. Could he hear Grandfather too?

“Ben,” Luke says, in that perfect Grandmaster voice Ben hates so much, “there’s someone else in the room with us. Can you see him?”

_No,_ Grandfather says, so Ben repeats it.

“Ezra, can you?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” Luke goes on. Then everyone else falls silent, listening to what the mysterious fifth adult has to say. But Ben has Grandfather, and Grandfather explains everything. Quietly. Distantly. But everything.

_You will have to lie to them, young one. But they deserve the lies. They deserve to choke on their own hypocrisies, and you will revisit this pain on them a thousandfold when you are stronger._

Ezra’s eyes are closed--all of the Masters’ eyes are closed--and his hand slips off of Ben’s.

_They are asking an impostor to speak for me. You will pretend that you hear what that traitorous charlatan says, and they will set you free._

_Yes, Grandfather,_ Ben thinks, as loud as he can.

That figure over Ahsoka’s shoulder glimmers, blue like a crystal. Ezra and Kanan reach out to it, like they’re trying to Force-pull it in; Luke and Ahsoka look like they’re meditating, their faces slack and open.

_Tell them that you have never seen me._

“I’ve never seen you.”

_Tell them that you have never heard me._

“I’ve never...heard you.” It hurts to say, but everything hurts, down to the stuffing in Ben’s ears.

_Tell them you only want to be good._

Ben does. That’s not a lie, though.

The Masters and Ezra stare in silence at that empty place. A blue pall still hangs in the light, like an emergency generator or a busted holo, but it flickers and is gone the next time Ben blinks.

Ezra lets down his hand, and scoffs, and immediately sets Ben free with a snarl on his lips. “I hope you’re happy with that,” he says, to the other three. Not to Ben. Never to Ben.

“Not yet,” Ahsoka snaps. “Ben. Look at me.”

_Forgive her,_ Grandfather says. _Forgive her now, and you will triumph over her later. I must leave you, for a time. You must make them believe that I was never here. But you are strong. You will make them believe. And when they are in a prison of their own making, I will return, and you will make them kneel._

“I’m sorry,” Ben says--

Ahsoka takes him by the chin, and looks deep into his eyes. She searches him, the way Luke searched him before. He doesn’t know what she sees, but she doesn’t look satisfied when she steps back.

“It’s not right,” she says. “This isn’t right.”

Ezra shoulders her aside and uncouples the binders, and the Force surges back into Ben’s mind. “You know what else isn’t right? Cutting a kid off from the Force.”

All their fear, all their distress, bludgeons Ben inside and out. The ghosts, the voices, the stone of the Temple--it’s like surfacing for air after nothing but the screech of near-drowning.

* *

Things are much worse at the School, after that. Worse than before Ezra, because Everyone Knows.

Everyone knows that Ben tapped into the dark side.

Everyone knows that something’s wrong with him.

Everyone thinks that he’s been lying about Grandfather, because Grandfather told him to lie about it and they all believe it, because they’re all idiots who only believe things that aren’t true about Ben. Sure, it’s true that Grandfather isn’t here anymore--but that doesn’t mean he never was.

Everyone’s thoughts pound through the walls like they aren’t even there. Every glare, every laugh, every perfect pitying Jedi sabaac-face when Ben’s already threadbare shields slip down. Master Jarrus guides him through hours of empty meditation and feeds him some crap about night sisters and a whole lot of quietly racist things about the Zabrak. Ahsoka disappears again. Luke talks to walls, and has more holo-conversations with mom in one week than she’s had with Ben all year, and pretends that he hasn’t.

But. Ezra.

“Did I ever tell you,” he asks Ben, one night, while Ben’s helping him recalibrate the compression on _Rex_ , “about my other Master?”

Ben blinks. But answers, once the shock’s dissipated, “No.”

Ezra swings up to the roof of _Rex_ ’s hull, and pats the space behind him. Ben joins him there, looks out over the forest to the setting golden sun. “I don’t really think of him as my Master,” Ezra admits, “but he taught me a lot. And he definitely called me his apprentice. I was a little older than you when I met him on Malachor. Kanan and Ahsoka brought me there to...well, it’s complicated. But there was a Sith holocron. A weapon, way more powerful than any of us understood.”

Ben sees that crossguard saber again, in the threads of the Force. In Ezra’s hand, smaller and paler than it is now.

“We found it together. Maul and I, I mean. It took both of us. Like you and me, at Lothal. I learned...I learned about the rest of my power. We moved stones, crossed caverns, found the holocron, and took it to the spire of the Temple. It was just like me and Kanan. Power shared is power doubled. And I thought that was the answer all along.”

“But?” Ben can’t help asking, no matter how sad and distant Ezra’s eyes are, blanched in the sunset.

Ezra smiles, the way that’s almost a lie. “He’s the one that blinded Kanan. And tried to kill him, the next time they met.”

That chill from last week hasn’t really left Ben’s spine, but it surges, a cold sweat.

“Power shared isn’t doubled,” Ezra explains. “It’s transferred. Everything comes with a price. Just trusting Maul on that first mission cost me my real Master’s trust. It tore through all the work I’d done toward being a Jedi. Not tore down, just through. Kanan and I had to learn to work together again. I didn’t think he’d forgive me. And _he_ almost turned, once, trying to stop me from going down that path again. I couldn’t let that happen. The only one who came out of Malachor stronger was Maul, because I trusted him.”

The last light of the sun creeps up _Rex_ ’s hull, like a blanket over Ben’s legs. They’re longer than Ezra’s, at least how they’re sitting.

“The Sith holocron said that Knowledge is Power,” Ezra says, looking Ben in the eyes with that tense half-smile. “It lied. Trust is Power. When you choose who you trust, you choose who you make stronger. That’s why the Jedi put all their trust in the Force first. It’s why Ahsoka doesn’t trust anybody, not really. It’s why Kanan trusts me, and our family, and I think it’s why your uncle’s in such a hard place.”

Ben sulks. “Because he doesn’t trust anyone either.”

“No. Because he does. He _has_ to. But it’s hard for someone like him, who’s always been able to trust himself, to understand people who can’t.”

Grandfather isn’t in Ben’s mind. Not right now, anyway. But Ben _knows_ , as deep as Grandfather, exactly what he means to say.

“We can trust each other,” Ben whispers. An offering.

Without a second’s hesitation, Ezra throws an arm over Ben’s shoulder and ruffles his hair.

* *


	6. FOURTEEN, part 1

It’s far from the first time he’s dreamed of Ezra. Far from. _Light-years_ from. Sometimes he dreams of Ezra so much that it’s easier to count the nights he hasn’t. Sometimes he can’t even remember the last time he didn’t.

And they’re not _always_ sex dreams. Just, well. Most of the time. And it’s not like they’re only about sex, there’s usually other stuff in them too. Sparring. Flying. Swimming. Things that totally aren’t having sex.

Ben doesn’t think he’s a freak. Everyone else thinks about it all the time. A couple of his agemates have done more than think about it. All the old Jedi rules are completely bunk; Luke’s had some people (not that Ben ever wants to think about them), Vos has grandkids now, and even Master Jarrus thinks about his wife. So it’s fine to dream, and probably fine to do. If Ezra were here. If Ezra wanted to.

He probably doesn’t want to. No one does, anymore. Months ago Lufi made it clear that Ben’s no longer welcome, and last week Arctas and Hikra decided that two was easier than three. Which is probably why the dreams are getting worse, come to think of it. Seeing other people happy is never easy. Which is probably why the Jedi used to forbid attachment and all that junk and pretend they were _above_ feelings, because you can’t pick and choose what feelings you get or how strong they are and the only way to cope is to bypass the entire system.

Which is wrong. Well, the part about not being allowed to choose what you feel is right, but the rest is wrong. It’s _not_ the only way to cope. You can use those feelings, even the awful ones. Use fear to keep running. Use anger to keep swinging. Use happiness to keep, Ben doesn’t know, _living,_ maybe, it’s not like it’s his choice where he lives or what he’s living for but if he were happy he’d keep doing whatever it took to hang on to that happiness.

The point, he guesses, is that he isn’t happy.

Then again, no Jedi is supposed to be.

Fuck supposed. And Fuck the Jedi.

* *

If he thinks too much about it, Luke will know. So he just gets up and storms past the night patrol (namely Hikra and Arctas getting it on in the underbrush), and steals a ship before anyone tries to change his mind.

Ben’s known how to steal a shuttle since he was six. He learned from the best, after all. And since the _Phantom_ is an antique run by another antique its protocols are almost disappointingly shot. Ben just leaves the busted old astromech planetside and flies the shuttle out himself, and by the time he’s cleared atmo he’s only just started getting yelled at over the comm.

Master Jarrus’s threats are ineffectual. He can’t even fly this piece of junk anyway. So Ben mutes the channel.

And programs a jump to Gorse, because it’s in the ship’s queue and just far enough away.

* *

It’ll be two days in hyperspace, but it’s quiet at last. Weightless. Practically a deprivation chamber. Ben’s always found those weirdly comfortable, which seems a little backward when he thinks about it but if it’s voluntary it can’t be that strange. For the first day cycle he sleeps, dreamless for once, and when he gets up and pillages some rations he settles back into that dark room and meditates.

Grandfather doesn’t answer. He hasn’t for months--he said he wouldn’t, and he doesn’t lie--but Ben still hoped. It does feel easier out here, always has, and even if Grandfather doesn’t answer him Ben casts his voice into the stars and talks to them instead. Everyone says that space is cold but no, it’s exactly the right temperature around him in the Force, and forget kneeling, Ben lies flat on the deck, corrugated metal be damned. He becomes the ship. The _Phantom_ , a relic but a warrior, a survivor.

This is how Grandfather must have felt in that lifesuit. Seeing nothing, touching nothing, breath not his own. Pain, yes, but a distant pain, more outside him than in. Ben’s never thought of it this way before. Beyond the hull the ship is burning, slowly, inevitably, but that’s the price of travel and it’s built to survive, to convert that heat into strength.

A patch of black overcasts the stars, floating over Ben like a reflection.

_Grandfather,_ Ben tries again, but the mask looming overhead isn’t his. It’s the creature from Lothal, the Revanchist.

_You’re running away,_ the Revanchist says.

All Ben can say to that is “I know.”

_If you wanted someone to talk to, you should have stayed at the School, child._

“I don’t,” Ben says, ignoring the condescension of being called a child. To something as old as the Revanchist, he _is_ one. “I want someone to listen. That’s not the same thing.”

The Revanchist laughs, fanning out, enveloping him. His cloak doesn’t feel like anything, or more accurately it feels like nothing. But that mask, level with Ben’s face, _that_ feels like everything.

_Where is your Master?_

“I assumed you could tell me.”

Another laugh, almost more like a snicker. _Can, yes. Whether I will or not is another thing entirely._ The floor of the cargo hold disappeared long ago, but now Ben can’t even feel the cloak supporting him. Nothing is. Well, that’s not new. _Why do you want to know?_

“Because he’s my Master.” As if that weren’t obvious.

Tendrils of nothingness push Ben’s hair off his forehead and neck. His skin prickles, then numbs.

_Are you off to find him?_

“Who else is going to listen?

_That depends on what you say._

Ben smiles, a little. The Revanchist is just like he remembers from Lothal, but less objectively terrifying. Ben’s fingers twitch, as if he could touch the Revanchist back, submerge them in the same dark cloak. He doesn’t feel anything, but he can’t see them either.

“I want to leave the Order.” Ben already felt weightless, but something in his heart leaps even higher, reverses polarity and makes the corners of his eyes just the slightest bit wet. “I want to leave, but I don’t want to stop using the Force. I’m too strong not to. So I want to find Ezra and we can just do this together, and he can teach me the rest of the way, and we’ll prove Uncle Luke wrong. Grandfather was right. The Jedi are wrong--were wrong from the start, and they’re gonna be wrong every time they try to start up again. They’re wrong at the code level. At the design level.”

The red in the Revanchist’s mask brightens, silvery in the dark. _And what are you going to do?_

“Find Ezra. He’ll understand, and he’ll help me.”

_Will he? How do you know? Or are you just projecting your thoughts onto his?_

“He _will._ ”

More and more of Ben’s body disappears into shadow and unfeeling. It climbs up his arms and leaves nothingness behind, spreads over his torso and down. It’s like floating in bacta, but stranger--more freeing, in a way--and when it creeps past Ben’s shoulders to his neck and chin a kind of smoky bliss fills his ears, eases the fear away.

_Why would Ezra Bridger help you?_ the Revanchist asks, dry and sardonic. _He has no stake in the Jedi Order. He’s not your Master. He has no reason to help an undisciplined, pusillanimous, half-grown, skinny failure like you._

Ben can’t help laughing at how strange _skinny_ sounds surrounded by all the rest. The numbness fills his lips, after, but he can still hear himself speak. “Why did you help me, then? Why give me a kyber crystal if I’m not worth it?”

_Because back then, you weren’t running away._

“I couldn’t stay! If I stayed long enough to plan, someone would have heard me and stopped me.”

_If you were worth stopping, you mean. What’s to say they wouldn’t just let you go? They don’t want you. They don’t love you. If you went back to that School and told them everything you’ve told me, they’d probably put you on a ship themselves. But that’s not what you really want, is it? You’re running away because you want them to chase you._

Ben can’t feel his head shaking, but his nose bumps the Revanchist’s mask, every time. It’s cold. “No. I don’t care whether they chase me. I’ll come back to them stronger, and then they’ll listen.”

The modulator on the mask gusts against Ben’s lips. _You really are growing up, child. You lie like an adult._

Ben’s back thunks down onto the floor. Light sears his eyes, and cold skitters over his skin, all at once, and he can’t help screaming. But not much. Just enough to echo in the harsh light of the _Phantom_ , alone in hyperspace. The vision is past. The Revanchist is gone. 

“You’re _wrong_ ,” he yells at the Revanchist anyway, slamming his fist into the floor.

It dents.

“You’re wrong! And I’ll prove it--I’ll prove it to _all of you_.”

The laughter in the back of his mind is nothing like Grandfather’s. That echoes too.

* *

Gorse doesn’t rotate. It has a light side and a dark side, and the dark side is a sprawling city-network of perpetual night. The light side is a wasteland too hot to touch a ship down.

The Force has a sense of irony.

Ben docks the Phantom in Highground as soon as he’s scrambled his credit account and sets out hunting for food and clothes. No one here will recognize a Jedi-in-training by his clothes but if anyone comes looking he doesn’t want to stand out, and Gorse isn’t the kind of place for leggings and untreated silk. He buys himself some military surplus, a Mandalorian bodyglove and boots and duster and utilibelt, all black. He looks like a mercenary, he thinks, older and tougher than he ever looked in brown and white. He has to wear the duster open if he wants access to his ‘saber but that’s not so bad.

If only he didn’t have a Jedi haircut. No Padawan braid, thankfully, but his hair is all short and exposing. He gets a grey scarf too, to cover it and his ears. Better. And he can hide his face if he has to.

Ezra’s not going to be easy to find, and probably not findable at all under his own name. But there are other ways: the _Rex_ has a docking code and ID, and it’s probably not scrambled if it’s Ezra’s primary shuttle. Ben talks his way into the docking register (mind tricks help people take him seriously) and finds out that, yeah, the _Rex_ was here about a standard year ago, and its comm channel exists. 

So Ben sets up a broadcast from the _Phantom_ , to tell Ezra where he is. And settles in to wait.

* *

Ezra’s not the one to show up.

It happens in two parts, actually. The first is when Ben wakes up, sensing someone else on the _Phantom_ , and maybe he’s still half-asleep so he can’t really be faulted for running right into one of the bounty hunters. He also can’t really be faulted for whipping out the lightsaber once they start shooting at him.

Part two, unfortunately, involves him waking up again, in binders and a gag, in someone else’s brig. Without the ‘saber. And still without Ezra.

Fuck.

* *

The four bounty hunters know enough not to talk around him, or to let him talk, but they can’t keep Ben from reading their minds. So Ben knows everything they plan to do to him. Worst case scenario, they’ll use him to draw Ezra out, because Ezra’s bounty is apparently ridiculously high and someone on board has a grudge. Best case scenario (for the bounty hunters) they start a bidding war between the scads of people who want Ben Organa alive. At least one person on the ship wants to sell Ben straight to Zygeria.

That’s fine. _Fine._ Fear makes him stronger.

Two half-successful escape attempts don’t actually equal an escape. The first time, Ben manages to telekinetically undo his gag and mindtrick the nearest guard into opening the cell, but only the captain has the code to remove the binders. Which means Ben tries to bust out with his hands still bound, which means he gets caught and roughed up for his trouble. The second time, since he’s gagged again, he tries to bust out with raw strength, blow up everything electronic in the brig and set as much on fire as he possibly can. That part works, but makes it much harder to actually get out of the cell. After that, they put a sack over his head and start drugging him.

* *

_Grandfather._

Nothing.

_Grandfather._

Nothing.

There’s nothing in his head, and nothing out of it. What’s worse is that he’s definitely awake, because he can hear the bounty hunters all over the ship, plotting what to do with him. They’ve already arranged to sell his ‘saber to a Hutt collector. The same hunter who wants to sell Ben to Zygeria thinks the Hutt will buy him too. Ben knows what that means. He’s seen holos of his mother killing Jabba Tiure and his dad and Chewie and Lando still get twitchy around carbonite. Ben’s not sure which he’d hate more, being frozen or being degraded. With his luck, this new Hutt will subject him to both.

At least his parents won’t have to see him like that. They probably won’t even come. The New Republic doesn’t negotiate with kidnappers, so mom will suck it up and deal. Chewie might convince dad to come, if they even find out about this, but they probably won’t make it in time. Luke’s not supposed to have attachments, so he’s right out. And if, _if_ Ezra shows up and trades his life for Ben’s, that’s just like dying.

The fundamental truth of the galaxy is that the people who hate Ben care much more about him than the people who claim to love him.

_Grandfather_.

Nothing. But the noise of the bounty hunters’ thoughts gets louder and louder, through the drug and the darkness.

There’s something there. No, not there, _here_ , here in the darkness and emptiness. It’s like space. Like solitude. Without things to see, Ben’s mind can reach farther. With the murkiness of the sedative, his thoughts are clouded but slower, lingering. Numb to the physical world, the Force is stronger.

Ben lies back on the floor of the cell, and calls out into the cosmos.

_Revanchist._

No answer: but not nothing. A presence, amused and distant, but present.

_I know you’re there. And I know you’re angry with me. This isn’t about that. This is me proving you wrong about that. I’m not running away, I’m becoming what I’m supposed to. Watch me. Watch this._

Ben reaches out into the ship. Four bounty hunters, shining in the Force like not-so-distant planets. They’re all weak-willed but on guard and ambitious, but their minds are linked, a crew that’s worked together for long enough to finish each others’ thoughts. Ben insinuates himself into that place in their minds, settles in to every single one of them, makes them one.

He hears, or feels, the Revanchist gasp through its mask. Like laughter, but not Grandfather’s laughter. Like he should have known something, and only saw it now.

There is nothing soft or sneaky about the way Ben shares his hatred with the bounty hunters. He blasts it directly into their brains, loneliness and pain and fear reduced to a spray of synapses and chemicals. He overwhelms them with the pain he’s in, lets their own sudden fear bolster it. He doesn’t care what they see as long as they hurt, all over. As long as they want this to end. As long as they feel the worthlessness of living in the shadows of the galaxy’s giants, the superfluousness of their own pathetic existence.

Every single bounty hunter is armed. It’s easy, so easy, to make them raise their blasters to their own temples and fire.

Whether they die instantly or not, all four of their lights go out.

* *

When Ezra finds him, long hours later, Ben still has a bag on his head. He’s hungry and filthy and chained up and bruised and _freezing_ , but alive, unlike everyone else on the ship. Except Ezra. Ezra’s here, and alive, and holding Ben and not letting him go.

“I saved myself,” Ben says, weakly, stupidly, but who cares, it’s true.

“I know,” Ezra whispers, over and over.

It gets less true every time he says it.

* *


	7. INTERLUDE

_The way I see it,_ Anakin says, awkwardly, but what _doesn’t_ come out awkward around his son, _is he wasn’t listening to you anyway._

Luke shakes his head. The shadows of Anakin’s glow are cold on his cheeks. Maybe he should start growing a beard. “That’s the thing, though. He does listen, some of the time. And I believe he wants to be a Jedi.”

_So did I._ Whenever he appears to Luke, it takes Luke straight back to ST 321, the ruins of the lifesuit and the face underneath it that hadn’t seen light in twenty-three years. Anakin spent half his life under that mask, and Luke was the only person to see him living without it, even if only for a moment. It stays with him. He knows that the other Jedi don’t see Anakin this way--Ahsoka sees her Master, and Kanan sees the paragon of the Order--but Luke welcomes it, every time.

“How does Ben see you?” Luke asks, and the Force itself laughs at the question, a hum of _it’s about time._

Luke isn’t surprised when Anakin answers, _He doesn’t. At most, he heard me, that time you and the others tried to connect us. But something wasn’t right about it. You felt it too, didn’t you?_

“Yes,” Luke admits. “But he’s lied about seeing you for as long as I can remember.”

Anakin shakes his head, a pained grimace on his jaw. _That’s the thing: a child who hates lying doesn’t lie. He clings to the truth as he perceives it._

_“From a certain point of view,”_ Luke quotes, and only then does the horror begin to dawn on him.

_Exactly. I believed, for so long, that the Emperor had my best interests at heart. I believed that my wife was going to suffer and die. I believed that my Master was turning against me and I was dead-set on the idea that only I could fix the Republic. I believed that no one loved me. None of that was true. But it was, to me. It was all I knew to believe. And I held on to it because it was mine, my truth, the only one I could see._

“Ben believes he sees you,” Luke whispers.

Anakin nods, and the ghost begins to fade. _So our question should be, who is he seeing--_

Luke’s shoulders freeze. “--and what does he want Ben to believe?”

_No. We know what he wants Ben to believe. It’s why, Luke. The question is why._

* *


	8. FOURTEEN, part 2

It takes some arranging--a lot of holos back and forth, a few credits in the right hands, and more apologies than Ben thinks that the Jedi deserve--but the adults and Ben come to a series of agreements.

Master Jarrus gets his requisite apologies. The _Phantom_ will be returned by personal courier back to the School, and Ben will compensate Master Jarrus out of his own money for repairs and fuel for the missing two weeks. (Not that Ben was ever going to _use_ that money, especially if he became a Jedi, but hey. No harm done.)

Ezra will collect the bounty for the four dead outlaws and scrap their ship, and that money goes to the School too. (Ben’s more pissed off about this than the former, actually, because he wants the credit, but Ezra has him under strict instructions _not_ to mention how the outlaws died to Luke or Master Jarrus.)

Mom has been informed that the abduction was resolved, and has her PR team covering the requisite bullshit. Technically, that’s not Ben’s concern at all. Dad and Chewie probably don’t even know it happened. And Luke knows, of course, because the agreement takes an argument that’s still not technically resolved.

“You can’t make me come back!”

“I know,” Luke says, garbled by the holo, eyes downcast so they’re barely visible. “But I intend to try.”

Ben clenches his fist around the holocaster. It doesn’t stop his hand from shaking. “Don’t bother. Nothing you say can make me want to come back. I’m not like you, Luke. I never will be.”

“You don’t have to be like me to be a Jedi--”

“Well, you don’t know any other way to teach me! Luke, I’ve learned more out here than I ever did with you!”

“You almost got yourself killed, Ben.”

“I took care of m--”

“Luke, he’s got a point,” Ezra cuts in, folding his hand over Ben’s so the holocaster doesn’t tilt or tighten any more. “He shouldn’t have to go back if he doesn’t want to.”

“Well, he shouldn’t be on his own.”

“He won’t be,” Ezra says, and Ben’s heart just about explodes.

The holo stutters in and out, but Luke must be perfectly still on the other side. 

Ezra looks over to Ben--over and up, Ben realizes, Ben’s taller. _Stars._ His heart definitely exploded, he can feel the shards trying to piece themselves back together inside his chest.

“Let me take him.” Ezra sounds so sure, even if he’s asking permission, even if he’s yielding to Luke: he wants Ben.

He wants Ben.

“You’re not a Jedi,” Luke points out.

“Neither was Kanan. At first, anyway. And who knows? You might get both of us back, in the end.”

Luke’s grimace transcends time and space, and not just because of the holocaster. “Ezra, may I speak with you alone for a moment?”

Ezra raises his eyebrow and looks to Ben again. “Say what you want to say first,” he tilts toward the holocaster again, his point clear and his presence in the Force more reassuring than anything Ben’s felt in weeks. “Just, a word of advice: try to make it about what you _do_ want, not what you don’t.”

_I want to be where I’m wanted,_ Ben doesn’t say. Maybe Ezra hears it anyway, maybe he doesn’t, but the thought permeates the air all the same.

Ezra’s hand tenses on Ben’s, and his grip on the holocaster loosens, just a little.

“Uncle Luke,” Ben starts, as polite as he can manage, and it takes a couple more deep breaths than he thought it would. “I don’t think the Order--” _No,_ something tells him to correct, “--I think I can learn more about the Force without the Order. Ezra’s been really helpful to me these last few years, and I think his way of doing things...works better with mine. I want to stay with him. I want Ezra to teach me.”

Ezra’s eyes are bluer than the holo. Bluer than any sky Ben’s ever seen. And bright, so bright, _chemical_ somehow when he smiles, and when he’s smiling at Ben--

“All right,” Luke says. “I’ll take that into consideration. Let us alone for a moment, Ben.”

Ben does. He lets go of the holocaster, and leaves Ezra in the cockpit, and bundles off to his bunk. To meditate. Or sleep.

And trust, maybe. Try to trust.

But they’re adults, in the end. They wouldn’t be adults if they didn’t keep secrets.

* *

This is a dream. It has to be. Ben hasn’t been back to Lothal since he was a kid, but he’s here, now, and he’s taller than Ezra. He knows this because they’re pressed up close together on the temple floor and Ben has to keep moving if he wants their bodies to match up. Ezra’s long hair feels like silk, like rain between Ben’s fingers, and his breath condenses on Ben’s chin. He laughs. It feels so good when he laughs, but not where Ben wants to feel it most, so he shifts--no, not there, not yet--not there either, but moving, moving feels good, Ezra feels good even if he can’t be everywhere at once--

“Here,” Ezra says, and takes Ben’s hand, “I’ll show you.”

\--and Ben’s own skin has never felt so good. Hot, like the hull of a ship after reentry. Smooth. Alive. Ezra guides Ben’s hand down the slope of his cheek, his throat, his chest (where did his clothes go? Maybe they were never here), his hip, his thigh. In. Rough stone digs into Ben’s shoulders and he arches the rest of himself off the wall, into his hand--his hand where Ezra’s holding it--where Ezra wants him--Ezra _wants him--_

_Yes,_ Grandfather says, _I want him too--_

“Ben?”

Someone’s ruffling his hair. Someone’s touching him, and he’s not dreaming. Anymore, anyway.

He’s in a ship’s bunk, barely long enough for him, and he’s (oh stars, oh _fuck_ ) very tactfully rolling onto his side so the real Ezra doesn’t have to see what was just going on under the blanket and Ben wishes were shrinking faster.

Ezra punches him lightly on the top of his head. And smiles. And it’s beautiful, unfairly beautiful. “Rise and shine, kid. If we’re flying together you’ve got to take a couple shifts.”

“Right,” Ben says, and then. Wait. “What?”

“I cleared it with Luke,” Ezra explains, still grinning. “So get up, get clean, and meet me in the galley so we can talk terms."

Ben has never showered so quickly in his life.

Twenty minutes later, he finds Ezra meditating on the galley floor without a cushion, his lightsaber within reach in front of him. Ben kneels too, and uncouples his ‘saber so he can mirror everything Ezra’s doing. He even matches their breath together, tries to keep it the same speed. It’s easier in space, like always. Easier, with Ezra.

“I know you don’t want to be part of the Order,” Ezra says, eyes still closed, maybe even still meditating, “but I have to lay down some ground rules. Understand?”

Ben nods, then remembers that Ezra’s not looking and says yes aloud.

“Okay. On _Rex_ , you’re my co-pilot. You’ll take as many shifts as I do, and yes, I’ll pay you for that. I’ve set up a dummy account for you under the name Hondo Ohnaka, and I’m trusting you not to connect it with your legit account. We’re going to run in to some nasty stuff out here, and I don’t want any of it to trace back to your parents. It’s _really important_ that you trust me when it comes to the people we meet, and the contacts I work with. You don’t want to know what some of them would do to get under your dad’s skin, or get your mom or uncle in their debt.”

“I’ve dealt with that before,” Ben says.

“I know. But it doesn’t get easier. If we’re doing this, you have to take it seriously. That means listening to me. I can promise I won’t lie to you, but I _have_ to keep some things from you, for your own protection, and theirs. At least for now.”

A sharp pang chills Ben’s throat, but he still nods. “Okay. At least you’re being honest about that. What else?”

“Force training, every day. No exceptions. Half-hour meditations for every shift you’re awake. Drills once a cycle. Luke said you still haven’t settled on a ‘saber school, but that’s fine, neither have I. I’ve got a holocron that you can use if you want to work on a specific form, but I think we’ll be fine without them.”

“I do too.”

“Great. And, one last thing.” Ezra’s eyes open, just enough that they become smiles themselves. “I buy the food, you do the cooking.”

Ben’s so startled that he pitches forward, laughing even as his head hits the floor.

“It wasn’t _that_ funny,” Ezra mutters, overhead.

“I--know,” Ben chokes out, looking up the best he can. “It’s just...is it really supposed to be this easy?”

Ezra shakes his head. “No. But when it’s right, it’s right.”

Ben could not possibly agree more.

* *


	9. FIFTEEN, part 1

Nothing in the universe is perfect, but the first few months with Ezra come damn close. 

It occurred to Ben, sometime around the third job, that he never actually asked what Ezra does: just assumed, from the fact that at least one of his ships was stolen and all his stories are of fighting his way out of scrapes and sieges during the war. It turns out that Ezra spends most of his time investigating rumors of Imperial agents, specifically the ones with a connection to the Sith. The ISB had an Inquisition, and the Emperor had Hands, and not all of them are accounted for. Ezra accounts for them. It’s the kind of thing that Luke, with all his self-righteousness, would never take care of himself, but that has to be done.

The first job was a wild caupoult chase. Out on Linliid, someone had crossed paths with Ahsoka on her mission and mistook her for a Sith, so the rumors were just rumors. The second job was much more exciting, at least to Ben, apprehending a pirate who was either feral or fallen. It turned out to be the latter, and pretty soon Ben had scars and stories of his own. The third job brought Ben to Kashyyyk, and even though Chewie wasn’t there, his family remembered Ben and welcomed Ezra and gave them a tip about a Wookie Force-user, and Ben and Ezra tracked him through five systems over three months before they managed to corner Gungi on Gintooine I, ascertain his loyalties, and arrange him a meeting with Ahsoka. Ezra didn’t speak Shyriiwook or know how to reason with Wookies, and he clapped Ben on the back in thanks, just for being there, for making this easier.

They train, as promised, every day. Ben outgrows most of the clothes he’d bought on Gorse and Ezra buys him new ones, still all black. Ben lets his hair grow out without meaning to, but even after he notices that he doesn’t look like a Jedi anymore he doesn’t bring it up, and Ezra doesn’t press it either. Pretty soon, Ben’s hair is hiding his ears, blending with the high collars of his shirts. Some days, with the scarf across his jaw, only Ben’s eyes show, and they’re almost black too. Like the moles on his cheek, thickening, spreading to cover him. It’s good. He thinks, looking in the mirror, that this must have been what the Revanchist saw.

The Revanchist doesn’t speak to him. Neither does Grandfather, outside of dreams.

And oh, what dreams they were. Are. Will be, probably, unless Ben ever acts on them. He wants to, all the time, so much that he wakes up sweat-drenched with a sore jaw and twitching hands and spends an hour in the ‘fresher. Sure, Ezra’s as old as Ben’s mom, but he’s so good, and so _bright_ , and when he ruffles Ben’s hair or pats his shoulder the touch is electric. Ben _knows_ , at the base of his brain right where it meets the spine, that if Ezra touched him for real he could die happy.

But things are better than they’ve ever been. And Ben has never gone long without the good things getting resoundingly fucked up.

* *

Ezra grimaces and slides the new datapad across the galley table to Ben. “We might need backup for this one.”

“I doubt it,” Ben says reflexively, but looks over the file anyway.

_Dathomir._ A planet that Arctas (forget him, Ben has Ezra now) and Master Jarrus have mentioned a couple of times. Used to be a Zabrak colony until the Clone Wars, when a Separatist agent rampaged through it and slaughtered most of the populace. It’s supposed to be uninhabited, but the readouts say it isn’t.

“It’s more than that,” Ezra points out, when Ben raises a questioning eyebrow at him. “The Dathomirians were natural Force-users. Not Jedi and not Sith, but they tapped into it. Ahsoka has a contact that used to be one of them. They called themselves the Nightsisters.” Ezra taps a holoprojector, a grainy long-shot that shows an unearthly fire that somehow looks cold, and the shadows of lifeforms converged around it, tall and hooded. “And they might be back.”

“Do we have to call Ahsoka?”

“We should.” Ezra cocks his head and smirks. “What, you don’t want to?”

“It’s not that,” Ben says, and then, because Ezra deserves better than lying, “I mean, it is, but it’s also not. I think we’ll be fine on our own. If we’re just investigating. But if they’re Force-sensitive, wouldn’t they spook if we brought Ahsoka too?”

“You have a point. So we’ll call her, but tell her to stay in orbit.” With a quick wave of his hand, Ezra flicks off the holo and calls the datapad back. “You’re a natural at this, you know.”

“At which?”

“At thinking about what other people are thinking.”

Ben doesn’t mean to blush, but then, who does? If he had his scarf on right now he’d hide behind it. “They think loudly,” he says. “I usually know. So when I don’t know, it’s easy to guess.”

“It’s a good skill to have. I wish I had it, back when I was getting started. Would’ve saved me and Kanan a lot of trouble.” Ezra reaches behind his head, idles with the hair bunched at the back of his neck. Ben wishes that hand was his. “Then again, maybe not.”

Ben’s already heard a dozen times, from Ezra and from Master Jarrus, how Ezra discovered his power in the Force and how they came together. And he knows about Ezra’s other Master, but, “Did people lie to you?”

“Sometimes,” Ezra says, quiet but easy, his smile dimming only a little. “But it was worse when they didn’t. Maul believed everything he told me, but I still didn’t know what he wanted, under it all. Ahsoka lied to us all, but it was because she thought it would keep us safe. Hera kept her contacts a secret so we wouldn’t give them up under torture--and it saved Kanan’s life, once. I wish it were as easy as lying or not-lying, Dark or Light. It isn’t.”

Ben shivers, but tries to stifle it under his scarf. Ezra, of course, notices anyway, but smiles, tight and a little awkward.

“I try not to think of it as lying,” Ezra goes on. “More like choosing what you share.”

“It doesn’t make it any better,” Ben says.

“I know. But if you weren’t you, you probably wouldn’t know when people were lying. I didn’t. That’s not how my power showed itself at first.”

“How did it?”

“Running and hiding. I didn’t really notice until it was just me, but I was really good at not getting caught by Imperials. I didn’t have any mind training until Kanan got me, and even now I can’t do some of what you can.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

Ezra laughs, just one little scoff. “Hey, I got better than Kanan real fast. But there are still some things I leave to him. The Force is different things to different people. I’m sure that even back in the Republic no Jedi was good at everything.”

“Grandfather was.”

Maybe it echoes through the ship, maybe it doesn’t, but something _stops_ in the air. Like a hiccup on the readout, or a burst of turbulence too quick to jostle the craft.

“He was,” Ezra says quietly. “Ahsoka says he was the best. But not at everything.”

“At everything that counts--at everything that had to do with using the Force.”

Ezra’s fingers twitch, and he scratches behind his ear, tucks a loose strand of hair behind it. “Do you ever wonder what you would have done, if you’d been Force-blind?”

Ben wrinkles his nose. “I don’t have to. It just depends on which parent would have snatched me up. I’d be a senator, or a smuggler. Well, not a smuggler, dad’s technically sold out. A privateer.”

“Really? There’s nothing else you’d want to do?”

“Like what? What else am I good for?”

“Not what you’re good for; what’d you’d want. If you hadn’t been born who you are. If you’d been like me, just some kid with a family. No gifts. No Force. Just enough money to choose your trade and get some training. What would you want to do?”

Ben honestly thinks about it. Or tries to. The question rattles around in his ears like a loose bolt, getting louder and louder and-- “I don’t know,” he bursts out, doesn’t mean to be that loud but then, he has to drown out the inside. “What about you?”

“Don’t laugh,” Ezra says conspiratorially. As if Ben would ever laugh at him. “I wanted to be a producer. My parents had a transmission show before the Empire got them. I used to steal stormtrooper helmets so I could get their bonus frequencies, listen to them on patrol...” He sighs, and Ben wants, so much, to reach over and touch that swell in his throat. “It was like I could treat the war like a holodrama. Like it was happening somewhere else, or I was the one making it happen. So yeah. If Kanan hadn’t been the one to get me off Lothal, I’d have tried to get somewhere I could have an audio show, maybe news, maybe stories, I don’t know.”

“That doesn’t sound bad,” Ben says, because everything else in his head would be even stupider to say. Like _I can see it_ or _take me with you_ or _but I don’t have anything like that_.

Ezra’s grin isn’t as tight as it was, but not as bright as it could be. “Kanan told me once that he didn’t know either. That even when he was still a Jedi, he didn’t know what he was supposed to do. Or even what he wanted to do. I think there’s something about the Jedi way that tries to pretend you’re not a person with dreams of your own. That it’s easier to put the Force first when you don’t know what else to be. Or what else you have. Or are.”

“I’ve...never heard it put like that before.”

“Well, I’ve never had to put it that way. I’m as new to this as you are.”

Ben can’t help his eyebrows piquing. “New to what?”

With another flicker in his smile, Ezra reaches across the table and pats the back of Ben’s hand. No, not pats--covers, touches and _leaves it there_ and Ben’s breathing stops. “Being needed, like this.”

Oh Stars and all their satellites, Ben is _not_ going sleep without dreams tonight.

* *

_Ahsoka must not come to Dathomir,_ Grandfather says.

Ben snaps awake. Or was awake already. Either way, Grandfather is still there, in his mind even after the world comes back to him and the lights on the ceiling start to spin. No matter how childish the elation feels Ben won’t fight it down, won’t tell his heart to stop pounding.

“I missed you so much,” he says, more aloud than he wants to. “Grandfather, I’m sorry I drove you off--”

_You did no such thing, young one. I took my leave because of their prying eyes. And that is why I warn you now: Ahsoka must not come to Dathomir. She must not interfere in the trial that awaits you._

“A trial.” Something wet gathers at the corners of Ben’s eyes. His skin feels too tight, everywhere.

_Your destiny awaits you there. Your future, and mine, and the galaxy’s. Ahsoka will inhibit your progress, as she always has. As all the Jedi have._

“But she’s not a Jedi.”

_She lies, young one. They all do. I am the only one who has never lied to you._

“Ezra hasn’t,” Ben says, and then remembers the shift in the galley. Ezra _has_ lied to him. Or kept things from him, at least. He said it’s hard to just call them all lies, but he did say he kept secrets, and that’s much the same.

Within Ben, Grandfather smiles, like warm salt water, like bacta.

“What do I tell Ezra?” Ben gulps, and whispers.

_Tell him you are called. He has had visions: he will trust yours. Tell him the truth, that you have seen in the Force that you must go, now, and only the two of you. Tell him of green fire and a circle of beings in hooded cloaks, surrounding you and only you._

What can Ben say to that?

“Grandfather,” he breathes, “I love you.”

_I know,_ Grandfather says.

* *

He does tell Ezra, and Ezra doesn’t object. They change their course at the next jump point, and train every hour that Ben is awake. Grandfather doesn’t speak again, but he must not have to if Ben’s following his orders. Ezra’s quieter, tenser than he was--but when Ben asks why, Ezra just smiles and chalks it up to pre-mission adrenaline. Which is consistent with the other three jobs they’ve run, and besides.

Ben doesn’t want him to change his mind.

The surface of Dathomir is bathed red, the continents like clots in a microscope sample or flotsam in a still lake. Its sun is enormous, near-nova, and Ben follows it through the transparisteel as it shrinks to a bearable brightness on the planet’s other side. Ezra starts the scan, and Ben meditates, knees to the corrugated floor as he casts his mind out to the stars again.

He sees the flash of green, like a ‘saber blade. Like Grandfather said he would. And yes, there’s a ring, black cloaks, all bipedal sentients with their weapons raised--

“Stop the scan,” Ben blurts out, the exact same time Ezra says “Wait, I see them.”

They plug in the surface coordinates, and settle _Rex_ amid the ruins of a great grey fortress that smolders with the Force. There are ghosts here just like the ones at the School, but angrier, taller, older. Male, Ben thinks, and soldiers, lined in rows and culled like livestock. He says so, aloud, but Ezra’s already jogging ahead, following a trail out of the ruins to the caves beyond, and Ben drowns the ghosts out to hear what Ezra hears.

The voices of the living. The thoughts, whispering and alien, of the living.

“Grandfather said,” Ben starts without thinking, at the mouth of the grey cave, its shadows blood-red in the sunset. “Grandfather said I’d face a trial here.”

“You shall,” says a voice from within, modulated and low. Like Grandfather’s in the holovids. Like the Revanchist’s.

And then it echoes, or repeats, in a half-dozen other voices, straight into Ben’s mind where there are no lies to be told.

Ezra powers on his saber, like he heard them too, and Ben takes his lead and follows suit. The gold light of their blades is like the reverse of a scar through the red, dense air. “Show yourselves!” Ezra calls, and it reverberates, real and alive where the other voices are targeted and artificial.

Rocks shift, and the Force thickens around them both. The cloaked figures emerge in two short lines of three, cloaked and--helmeted, Ben realizes, like Grandfather, and armed to the teeth. Some taller than Ben, some shorter, their cowls flapping in a wind Ben can barely feel. They split, three to one side and three to the other, and form a circle around Ben and Ezra but don’t draw their weapons.

“Welcome,” one says, through a mask like a keypad, “heir of Vader.”

“Welcome,” another says, this one with a helmet that’s flat on top like a gatherer’s hat, “scion of Maul.”

* *


	10. FIFTEEN, part 2

“What in the Sith Hells are you?” Ezra snaps.

A clicking sound like laughter pulses from some of the masks’ modulators. Ben doesn’t shiver. “We are not Sith,” one says, with an enormous gun strapped across its back.

“The Sith are no more,” says another.

“Your Masters saw to that,” says a third, and on and on, from one point on the circle to another.

“You sought the key to their destruction, scion of Maul.”

“At long last, you have found it.”

“And you are it,” the last one says, and the slat of its helmet bores into Ben, and calls him again, “heir of Vader.”

Ezra scoffs and swipes his ‘saber through the air. None of the robed figures even flinch. “Sounds like a lot of crap to me. You said there aren’t any Sith--how can Ben be the key to destroying something that doesn’t exist?”

_Listen,_ Grandfather says, like a warm palm to the back of Ben’s neck, never mind his cowl and scarf. _Listen to them, young one._

“Darth Vader was the last,” one said, and the spiral of voices began again.

“For a time, he brought balance to the Force.”

“He eradicated the Jedi.”

“He hunted their remnants.”

“And when the scales tipped toward the Dark, he slew the last of the Sith, and perished.”

“The Jedi were no more.”

“The Sith were no more.”

“And now there are Jedi again.”

“And where there are Jedi, the Sith shall rise to oppose them.”

“The Force spared your Master, scion of Maul, to balance Kenobi.”

“It turned you, in turn, to balance your other Master.”

“But the Jedi arise, too numerous, and grow now with a power they do not understand.”

Ezra protests, “I never turned.”

“You turned aside,” the helmet right behind him says.

“You are wise to walk the middle path.”

“You are true to the Force in all its aspects, as we are.”

“And the heir of Vader has seen your wisdom, and led you to us.”

“To finish what Vader started.”

“To scourge the Jedi from the galaxy, and the Sith with them.”

Ben was listening. He couldn’t not listen: Grandfather had told him to. But he couldn’t believe what he heard just then: _Scourge the Jedi._

_Finish what Vader started._

“Grandfather,” Ben whispered, aloud, the words kept so close to his mouth that the scarf didn’t rustle, “you can’t mean that.”

There was no sign that anyone heard him. And Ezra snarled and shook his head, “No way. That’s not what I do, and it’s not what Ben does either.”

“But it _is_ what you do, scion of Maul.”

“You, who chase the dark side into corners and blind it with your light.”

“You, who took the heir of Vader from those who would bind him and followed him here.”

“We welcome you, scion of Maul.”

“We welcome you, Ezra Bridger.”

“Be one of us.”

“Be one with us.”

“Serve the heir of Vader as a Knight of Ren.”

The red light of Dathomir stretches their shadows long, into the mouth of the cave and the darkness within. A landing platform. A path. 

Ezra glares at Ben over the light of his blade. “Ben, did you know about this?”

Ben can’t speak, shakes his head. “I knew to come. I knew there’d be a trial.”

“Well if it’s a trial, who’s judging it?”

The Knights of Ren answer, in unison, “The heir of Vader’s Master.”

Ben’s mouth falls open, and his ‘saber nearly slips from his grip. “Grandfather.”

“That’s it,” Ezra growls, though there’s something about him that’s still smirking. Like dad, when he’s up against bad odds. “Ben, we’re going back to the ship. Thanks for your time, guys. We’re not interested.”

“The heir of Vader must speak,” one Knight says.

“Not if he doesn’t want to. Ben, we’re _leaving_.”

“But Ezra--”

“You don’t seriously want to listen to this banthashit, do you?” Ezra’s eyes narrow, like they did years ago when Ben was in those Force-dampening cuffs and all of the Jedi were gathered around him like they knew best. But now Ezra’s glaring at Ben, not Luke or Master Jarrus or Ahsoka--

\--Ahsoka--

\-- _Ezra is thinking about Ahsoka._ No, not thinking about, sending to. Casting his mind out to her. Like she’s here. Like she’s close enough to hear.

“Ezra, I told you not to call Ahsoka!”

The glare subsides immediately. Just a blink, and a knot of concern and horror. But it’s too late. He’s still thinking about her. And he’s guilty. And he _lied_. “Ben?”

“I’m going to fail because of you! Grandfather said if Ahsoka came she’d--”

“Ben, that’s not your Grandfather talking to you.”

“How dare you!” Lying’s bad enough, but this? “How would you even know? He doesn’t talk to you!”

“Luke said--”

“You’re talking to _Luke_? Since when?”

“Ben. Easy. Just calm down and we’ll talk about it back on the ship.” Ezra powers off his ‘saber, takes a step right into Ben’s space, like it’s okay, like he’s allowed after what he said.

Ben brings his ‘saber up into guard to stop Ezra in his tracks. “No. You’re just like the rest of them!”

“We can argue about this later when we’re not surrounded by a Dark Side Vader Cult, okay? Breathe, Ben. Calm down.”

Oh, Ben doesn’t need to calm down. He can hear Ezra’s thoughts just fine. With the strength of the Knights around him Ezra rings out loud and clear into the Force. It’s a tangle, a knot of sounds and images and promises, and shame.

Shame only happens to hypocrites.

_Keep an eye out,_ Luke says, blue as a holo but clear as an order. _If he won’t let us look, maybe he’ll confide in you. We have to stop whatever’s going on in his head._

_I’m increasing your retainer,_ Mom says--Mom, with the same uncomfortable smile she always seems to have when she holos Ben, the same knowing smirk, _as long as you’re taking responsibility for him. Maybe break it to him that you’re on the Republic payroll when he starts to like your line of work. If I know my son at all he’ll want to believe it was his idea._

A dozen little touches. Smiles. Laughter.

He was laughing at Ben this whole time, wasn’t he.

_Anakin says that the kid never listens to him._ Ahsoka sighs, montrals low, and she’s not a holo. She’s in Ezra’s presence. She’s the one who gave him the data on Dathomir in the first place. She sent them here. _What’s to say he’ll listen to you?_

“Traitor,” Ben whispers, then _screams_.

He swings his ‘saber twice before he even tells himself to do it. Ezra blocks both times, of course, but Ben keeps swinging wildly like he could beat that beautiful face into nothingness, pulverize Ezra beyond recognition--blind him like Master Jarrus, or just make him look like the traitor he is so no one will ever trust him again. But Ezra parries every swing, the lighter gold of his blade crossing over Ben’s more times than Ben can count.

The Knights chitter and gust around them, a vortex of black in the low red light. Ben shouldn’t have paid attention to that because once he notices them Ezra gets in a solid swing and Ben’s blade goes _flying_ \--one of the Knights pins it when it skids against a durasteel-tipped boot--and Ben reels back into the arms of another Knight. And doesn’t fall. He’s shorter than this one, he thinks, in the part of him that isn’t cursing Ezra for existing.

“Ben, _stop it!_ ”

“No!”

“You don’t want this, Ben. You don’t want to do this. Just come back with me and we’ll sort it out.”

“Never!”

“We had hoped you would see it our way, scion of Maul,” the Knight holding Ben up says. No breath passes through the modulator of its mask.

“My other Master taught me a hell of a lot more than Maul did,” Ezra snarls, lancing out his ‘saber arm with the blade parallel to the ragged earth.

Another says, “We know that you walk our path in your heart of hearts.” 

“We know you scorn the Jedi and their ways.”

“We know you hate the Sith and their perverse traditions.”

“You know a lot of crock.” Ezra _glowers_. “Now let Ben go.”

It’s funny, almost, to hear Ezra say that. _Let Ben go._ True, one of them has gloves folded around Ben’s upper arms, holding him up. But not holding him back.

Like he believed Ezra wasn’t.

So Ben spits the same words he gave to Luke. “Don’t bother. Nothing you say can make me want to come back.”

Ezra _hurts_. None of Ben’s swings got him but his pain is clear in the Force, and even if it weren’t his eyes are like lodestones. For a moment, the blue darkens to black, his pupils are blown so wide, and that black tinges red in the last of the crimson sunlight. A shadow swoops overhead and his eyes don’t stop shining, and Ben shoulders sink and he feels, maybe, like he said too much.

No. All he did was tell the truth.

“Ben,” Ezra mouths. The Force hears it aloud. “I was just trying to protect you.”

Ben’s about to start yelling at him again, a tangle of _From what_ and _banthashit_ and _I hate you_ , and somewhere Grandfather is screaming and gears are turning and metal is melting into magma--but that shadow overhead sweeps by again, a ship so low to the ground that it knocks Ben off his feet and into the Knight’s chest. But Ezra doesn’t fall--Ezra jumps, and clings to the open hatch, and an orange-skinned hand pulls him inside as they clear the distance and disappear.

A voice, neither Grandfather’s nor the Revanchist’s, spears into his mind.

_I’m sorry,_ Ezra says. And it feels like he’s going to say more, but Grandfather’s warm laughter snuffs it out like Ezra deserves.

As the sun sets, the Knights come nearer, tightening their circle with Ben at their center. “Come,” one says, and the others follow.

“Take your trials.”

“Find your path.”

“Perhaps you will steer the scion of Maul to it in time.”

“Make him see your power, heir of Vader.”

“Make him see the truth.”

The first Knight hands Ben back his ‘saber, still warm from the fight, dusted with Dathomir’s red earth.

The seven of them enter the cave as one.

* *


	11. INTERLUDE

Ezra pounds his fist on the wall of the shuttle until the pain turns into numbness. He hasn’t cried like this since he was a teenager. Ahsoka wasn’t there then--which is, hatefully, why he cried, and enough of a reminder to make him sick to his stomach--but she’s here now, a hand on his shoulder, so like Kanan’s.

But Kanan, even if he isn’t here, is on the comm, and knows how much this hurts. Can probably feel it, too, the way he always has when Ezra slips.

 _Most of the time,_ Kanan used to say. _My Padawan, most of the time._

“I don’t blame you,” Kanan says, over and over, a consolation.

Ezra grimaces. “Thanks for not saying it isn’t my fault. Because it _is_ my fault.”

“It’s all of our faults.” Ahsoka slumps against the hull, one hand folded around Ezra’s fist to keep him from swinging it anymore. That’s fair. He probably shouldn’t ruin his knuckles. “Ezra, you tried.”

“And failed.”

Another voice cuts in, closer than Kanan’s but carrying distance with it, like a blaster bolt over Ezra’s ear. _You can’t get blood from a stone, kid. I’d know._

Ezra looks up, into the towering spectral form of Darth Vader. He sounds, of course, like Anakin Skywalker, but what can Ezra say, some first impressions are hard to shake. The others don’t see him that way. No one seems to care, though, least of all Anakin.

“It was never you,” Ezra says through grit teeth. He wipes the last tearstains off his cheek with the back of one sleeve, and keels toward Ahsoka’s shoulder. “So don’t blame yourself either.”

_I don’t. I’m more for blaming the creep who stole my grandson._

A tight, uncomfortable smile comes to Ezra’s lips, and he doesn’t bother fighting it down. “You know, from a certain point of view, that’s me.”

_Careful with that phrase, kid, you’ll summon Obi-Wan._

It’s funny, sometimes, how bad jokes can spear through layers of anger and pain. Ezra’s used that more than anyone else he knows, to pry himself out of darkness, to keep the hurt at bay. Right now the flip little comment leaves him hollow, but still does its job. Maybe it’s a Jedi thing. He’d only half-know.

“Master,” Ahsoka says, low and uncomfortable. “We still don’t know who he is.”

A chill permeates the ship, and all the cracks in Ezra’s bones fill with ice. Another Force Ghost, or a presence at least, looms over Vader’s shoulder, and Ezra gets the feeling that everyone here is going to see this one the same way: masked, and red, and ancient.

 _Don’t worry, you blind idiots,_ the Revanchist snarks, _just wait. He’ll come to you._

* *


	12. SIXTEEN

Grandfather says it’s time.

Grandfather says a lot more than he has over the past few years. Ben’s with him every day, in the caves of Dathomir, where the Force is so strong that sometimes he feels like the air’s gone thicker, like it’s part of the gravity. The Knights hear Grandfather too, converse with him, meditate with him. When all six of them plus Ben and Grandfather are joined together in their minds Ben has never felt stronger.

Ben doesn’t ask what it’s time for. He accepts the masked helmet, like the Revanchist’s but only black and silver. It’s overlarge.

Grandfather says he’ll grow into it. That he’s still growing. That there’s no telling how strong he’ll become, now that he’s free of the Jedi and their expectations.

Grandfather’s expectations are much easier to meet.

* *

The Knights of Ren don’t bother asking for clearance when they touch down in the fields by the School, on the same engine-blasted patch that Ben’s cleared so many times before. It’s near sunset, rain swelling on the orange horizon, and the shadows of the parked ships stretch out toward the brush. Another runway. Another clear path.

Grandfather says it will all be over soon. He senses Ben’s nausea, says it’s the power inside him, ready to burst. To be shown. Ben takes his lightsaber in hand and leads the Knights down the gangplank, since he knows where to go. He’s been here.

It’s starker, smaller, through the mask of his helmet. The foliage has less color, the students’ faces less definition. Even the noise, the swarming Force presence of dozens of young Jedi and ancient ghosts, is diminished, even if Ben’s connection is stronger than ever. It makes the place almost bearable.

Almost.

Two of the Knights take up positions in front of the parked ships, to disable them if this doesn’t go well. Ben lets Grandfather guide him, and in turn guides the remaining four Knights, straight into the heart of the School, ignoring the gaping younglings and the padawans Ben’s age trying to crowd them out of the way. Ben thinks, proudly, that he must look a sight: at the apex of five massive figures in formation, all cloaked and masked in black, weapons brandished. The Force is with him.

One of the younglings who isn’t just rooted to the spot and staring actually turns and bolts for Luke’s quarters. Good. Best to have this over with. A padawan steps forward with her hand raised to ask who they are, and Ben has no time for that so he freezes her on the spot and keeps walking. Her throat shivers under the weight of her paralyzed jaw. Ben doesn’t remember her name.

There was no point in that youngling running to get Luke: he emerges into the courtyard, cloak billowing behind him thich enough for the child to hide behind. Luke raises his eyes, and looks up square into Ben’s, mask and all.

“Welcome back,” Luke says, as if he hadn’t already reached out with his mind and _known_ Ben, his power like a rush of cold water.

Ben doesn’t remove his helmet. “I don’t plan on staying.”

“Then what do you plan on doing, Ben? And for what? For who?” There’s no fear in Luke’s countenance, and the youngling behind him looks up with wonder and every respect. Ben remembers that feeling, down to each short happy breath.

If this churning in his gut is power, he’s about to be sick with it.

“You need to close the School, Luke. The Jedi are done for. You know it in your heart. You have to. You’re strong enough to see what I’ve seen.”

Luke shuts his eyes, tilts his chin in a bare nod, the way he always does when the Force is with him. A tendril of his presence brushes against Ben’s mind and Ben can’t block it out, never could.

It doesn’t matter. Mask and cloak and all, Ben has nothing to hide.

Luke somehow manages to raise an eyebrow with his eyes still shut, disappointment and disdain plain from the cut of his jaw. “You still think he’s with you,” he tsks, his meaning obvious.

“He always has been.”

“No, Ben. _We_ have. I’m with you, your parents are with you--”

“You keep telling yourself that, maybe it’ll come true.”

“This isn’t about the School, Ben. It’s not about the Jedi. We’ve hurt you, and I’m sorry for that, but everything we’ve done we’ve done to protect you. There’s no need to take your pain out on the younglings.”

Ben snarls, enough to echo through the modulator in his helmet. “You really think that’s what I’m doing?”

“I don’t think it Ben, I know it.”

“You _know_ it.” Ben can’t help rolling his eyes and reeling back on one heel. “I should have known you’d say something like that. It’d be the Jedi thing to say. Because you think you know everything about the Force, don’t you, just from carrying a troll around a swamp and growing a beard and killing the only man who knew what was wrong with the galaxy and tried to _fix_ it--”

Luke’s eyes flash open. “Ben, I never killed Vader--”

“--the only person who had the strength to wipe this backward Order out. And you just _know_ how to fix it. Like you just _know_ everything. Well maybe you’re not the hero the galaxy needs anymore, Luke Skywalker. Maybe you never were.”

“And you are?”

_Yes,_ Grandfather says, but Ben knows better. “I’m going to do what’s right,” he says aloud. “Give up the School.”

Luke, insufferably, says only “No.” And smiles.

Ben powers his ‘saber on. “Draw.”

“Don’t do this, Ben. ” Luke shoos the youngling behind him away, and the child runs for the trees.

“I said draw it!”

“I didn’t fight him and I won’t fight you.”

Grandfather laughs, and his voice, through Ben’s helmet, is deep and clear and strong. “And that will be your downfall.”

At Ben’s signal, the Knights move in. One fires their rifle, and the bolt flashes to Luke--and Luke raises his hand, not his ‘saber. Synthskin smokes, and ozone, and the fake flesh melts down the sleeve of Luke’s cloak with only a sharp intake of breath to show his pain.

The slaughter begins. With his mind half-subsumed in communion with the Knights, it’s so easy for Ben to not-think, just kill. He cuts down a padawan--Hikra, maybe--and remembers that ship, the bounty hunters, venting his pain to the world instead of swallowing it with the Force. Every Jedi killed brings down the chaos in his ears, cuts out a track of the noise and the lies.

His blade crosses dozens, all smaller than his, and leaves none shining.

Out the corner of his eye, he sees Luke leap onto the nearest rooftop and head for the crèche, two of the Knights in pursuit. Luke still hasn’t drawn his ‘saber. Maybe he can’t. No matter, Ben can--

Master Jarrus’s blue ‘saber, longer than Ben’s, clocks him across his helmet and sends him reeling.

Ben’s back slams into the courtyard wall, stone stabbing him right between the shoulders. The crest of his helmet cracks it and he drops his ‘saber, not far away but it still slips out of his glove and hits the dirt. Master Jarrus looms overhead in a full Soresu guard, the scars where his eyes once were knit into a glare.

A Knight takes a swing at Jarrus from behind to give Ben time to get his ‘saber back. Of course Jarrus parries it, he’s been blind longer than Ben’s been alive, but it’s no less terrifying. But Ben’s fought him before, and sends to the other Knights, _get him on unsteady ground_. A flash of memory sears Ben’s eyes, a collapsing city with raw stone walls and ancient corpses, a full-face white mask. Ben spits blood into the modulator. It buzzes.

With a twist and a slow solid landing, Master Jarrus fends off the Knight, but Ben’s up again and charges in to fill the gap. But a different ‘saber, golden and bright, blocks him on the way.

“Ezra,” Ben chokes out over the thunder of their locked blades.

Ezra doesn’t listen. He isn’t even looking at him, just holding him off, his eyes darted toward Jarrus even if Jarrus can’t look back. “Kanan, get to the ships!”

“Not without you,” Master Jarrus barks.

“I’ve _got_ this, Kanan. Trust me.”

“I can’t fly, you know that--”

“Well, I can’t teach, and you’ve got a lock on that. The younglings need you. Chopper’ll fly. _Go!_ ”

Something in Ezra’s stance weakens, and Ben takes the swing, straight for Ezra’s neck. He blocks again, stronger, then swoops under the crossed blades and _smacks_ his hilt into Ben’s helmet. Ben’s vision blacks out, then goes red, and something wet soaks the viewscreen. He’s bleeding inside the helmet. Ezra hit him _that hard_. Ben reels, screaming, and Grandfather says get up, you’re better than this, make him pay make him pay _make him see_.

When Ben’s helmet hits the floor, so does one of the Knights, the one Master Jarrus was locked in a duel with. Jarrus straightens enough to turn to face Ezra, and even if their eyes don’t and can’t meet Ben knows they’re connected.

“Don’t say it,” Master Jarrus warns--Ezra, not Ben.

Ezra smiles, sad, the creases deepened by the sweat from his hairline. “I won’t lie.”

“Good.” And as the Knight at his feet rises, seething, Kanan turns and runs, with no fear anywhere in his countenance. It’s the most honest Ben’s ever seen him. “May the Force be with you,” he tells Ezra as he goes, and it echoes, Ben’s vision and ears swimming with blood and heat.

Ben lets the helmet go and staggers, clutching his forehead. Ezra hacks off the Knight’s right leg below the knee without taking his eyes off Ben, and he looks so hurt, so hateful, so _beautiful_ that Ben wants to cry. Or maybe that’s just the blood gathering under his eyes.

“You don’t have to do this,” Ezra says, looking Ben in the eyes. And he means it.

But he’s wrong.

“Master.” The word just falls from Ben’s lips, and maybe he’s just dizzy or sick but the world is spinning and Ezra’s at the center of it. “I do. I have to. I’m doing it for you.”

Ezra balks. The battle rings on beyond the courtyard walls, the rain starts to pound and the and children are screaming, and Ben wants to scream too but the words keep pouring out of him too fast for him to shout.

“Come with me. It’s not too late. You want this too. You want me to be strong for you and I _am_ strong, you want me to know what I want and I want you--you understand it. You understand me. You--” he steps forward, and his feet are like his voice, smaller steps than they should be but forward, forward, forward, “--Master, we can do this together. We can fix the galaxy, together. We can do _anything_ together, it’s right, you said when it’s right it’s right--”

His mouth crashes into Ezra’s, and he doesn’t taste blood anymore.

 _Peace is a lie: there is only passion,_ a voice in his head whispers, not Grandfather’s, in a language Ben wasn’t sure he knew. But as soon as those words slip into incoherence there’s nothing in their place. Heat fills him from the lips down, and shock and thunder, and Ezra’s ‘saber still hums beside them and that’s all. The noise is gone. The galaxy is gone. It’s shrunk to skin and rain and want and Ezra, and Ben was right, he could die happy from just one real touch.

Then an engine thunders overhead, and the explosive pop of a ship clearing atmo, and Ezra shoves Ben off, gasping. Ben’s blood is on Ezra’s chin, bright red. His jaw hangs open in a resounding _no_.

Another Knight falls, somewhere not here. The survivors flee. Luke, somewhere, thanks Ezra for buying them the time, and Ben hears everything in the new vacuum of his mind.

Ben screams, and powers his ‘saber on, and lets Grandfather take the helm. His ‘saber sizzles in the downpour, and the last thing he sees is the chemical blue of Ezra’s eyes, overcast with a sheen of steam and falling water.

* *

* *

Months later, after he emerges from Supreme Leader Snoke’s bacta tank, he looks up the holonet reports of the slaughter at the Jedi School.

Officially, Ezra Bridger is counted among the dead.

That means nothing. Officially, Ben Organa-Solo is counted among them too.

 _You know,_ the Revanchist says in the cracks of his skull, _the Jedi say there is no death._

“You’d know.”

_I would._

“And what would the Sith say?”

_That there are things far more frightening._

That rings true. He doesn’t say so aloud, but the Revanchist laughs anyway.

_You’d let them get off without an answer, child._

“I’m not a child.”

_Oh, of course not. Ben Organa was a child. Just look at that report. He died, an innocent Jedi youngling. A victim. A casualty of the existence of people like you. Is that what you mean?_

“They said the same of Anakin Skywalker.”

_Ah, right. And that’s whose words are coming out of your mouth now. Clearly._

The Revanchist’s mask cracks down the middle with the force of Kylo Ren’s anger. The laughter dissipates, but Grandfather’s warmth and smile remain, filling all the rends in Kylo’s soul where Ben used to be.

 ** _Yes,_** Grandfather says. _**And you will finish what I started.**_

*


End file.
